Related:
- Abortion Correspondence with Doris Gordon, Libertarians For Life (1996) (June 14, 2023)
- KOL443 | Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Approach (PFS 2024) (Sept. 22, 2024)
- Abortion: A Radically Decentralist Libertarian Solution (Grok)
- Walter Block, “Does Trespassing Require Human Action? Rejoinder to Kinsella and Armoutidis an Evictionism,” MEST Journal (forthcoming 2025): Abstract: “Libertarian scholars Kinsella and Armoutidis criticize the libertarian theory of evictionism. This is a principled compromise between the pro-life and the pro-choice positions. Its conclusion overlaps with the former in the last trimester of pregnancy and with the latter in the first two trimesters. That is, the pregnant mother may expel the fetus from her body whenever she wishes but may not ever kill this preborn baby. This theory is predicated upon the notion that the unwanted fetus is a trespasser; an innocent one, to be sure. Thus, he may be expelled from her body, her private property, but not treated as a criminal, since he is innocent of any crime. Evictionism stands or falls on this one claim. If the fetus is not a trespasser, this solution to the abortion controversy is a failure. Kinsella (2023) and Armoutidis (2024) maintain, to the contrary, that trespassing is a human action, and that the fertilized egg, the beginning of human life, is capable of nothing such thing. This essay aims to refute their position.”
- Rothbard, Editor response to James Sadowsky, S.J., “Abortion and Rights of the Child,” Libertarian Forum, XI, no. 4 (July-Aug. 1978). Rothbard writes: “to correct a misunderstanding, while Walter Block and I agree on many things, we are not a monolith. In contrast to Walter, who agrees that the foetus is human, I simply made the assumption for the sake of argument, in order to grant the anti-abortionists their best case. In fact, if I had to “vote” on the issue, I would probably say that the foetus only acquires the status of human upon the act of birth. If so, then of course the foetus has no rights, and the thorny abortion question would be eliminated forever. It seems to me that the problem with the Block-Sadowsky thesis of asserting the foetus to be human is that that act of birth, which I had always naively assumed to be an event of considerable importance in everyone’s life, now takes on hardly more stature than the onset of adolescence or of one’s “mid-life crisis.” Does birth really confer no rights?”
- Zark, “At Ease with Easements: A Libertarian Case for Easements: Resolving Landlocked Libertarian Property Conflicts,” Planet Zark (Jan 11, 2026): Grok: “The Substack post “At Ease with Easements” defends forced easements (rights to cross private property against the owner’s will) as theoretically necessary in libertarian property theory to avoid contradictions, impossible duties, forestalling, and effective enslavement, using three cases: a “donut” of homesteaded land enclosing unowned interior that others cannot access, accidental confinement (e.g., wind blowing someone onto land with no permitted exit), and restricted invitation that traps a person. This stance aligns more with Walter Block’s anti-forestalling “Blockean proviso” than with Kinsella or Hoppe: Kinsella rejects such forced easements, treating property rights as purely exclusionary (with easements arising only via voluntary title transfer/contract) and denying any special status or access claim for unowned land simply because it is enclosed; Hoppe similarly grounds exclusive title in original appropriation without provisos that burden first appropriators, while allowing only the preservation of pre-existing rights-of-way when privatizing former common or public resources (not new claims across pure private land).”
- My comment: “‘it becomes harder to see how B-Y are not committing aggression by refusing to allow passage to resources they have a duty to not prevent people from accessing.”I don’t see why you have a duty to “not prevent” people from accessing unowned land that your land blocks access to. In general obligations or duties are those that correspond to negative rights only. There are not positive obligations. You can’t make something look like a negative obligation by clever wording– by saying “a duty to not prevent people from accessing” instead of “a duty to [let people use your property to access]” But then this way of wording it would show that it’s just an assertion and question-begging. There is no “contradiction’ entailed by not letting someone use your property to access remote unowned property. Even if there is, “contradicting” is not an act of aggression. In any case, you can’t just say that because an unowned tract is unowned, “homesteading it is permissible,” and thererefore, there ‘is a duty” not to prevent it. Saying it’s permissible only means that (a) the property has no owner, and that (b) IF someone is able to reach and possess and control and emborder it, then they would have established a link to it and become its owner.So I think the error may your sneaking in the loaded term “permissible” e.g. “If no one has a duty to not homestead the interior, then it is permissible to homestead the interior.” You are reading ‘is permissible” to imply that there is a duty not to allow it to happen. Look you can say it’s permissible for people to “eat food” or to “have food” and then you could say positive welfare rights are justified because otherwise you are “allowing them to starve” or “preventing them from having that which it is permissible them to have.” But saying it is permisisble for someone to have food only means that “having food” is not per se a rights violation–that if you are able to get food without violating rights, you have the right to do it. It doesn’t mean anymore than that.
Same with saying it’s permissible to homestead unowned land in the middle of the donut. Saying it’s permissible only means that if you can do it, it would be legitimate. It’s like saying it’s permissible for you to travel to Alpha Centauri and homestead an unowned tract of land on a planet there. SAying it’s permissible is just a way of saying “if you do X, then it doesn’t necessarily violate others’ rights” or “if you are able to possess X, then you own it”. So if you are clear about what it means to say “it’s permissible to hometead X” then it does not not imply a duty on the part of a third party “not to prevent it from happening by failing to provide the means to make it possible.” Because this is simply just a restatement of Block’s ridiculous position that “libertarianism abhors unowned property,” whatever this weird metaphorical statement is even supposed to mean.”
- My comment: “‘it becomes harder to see how B-Y are not committing aggression by refusing to allow passage to resources they have a duty to not prevent people from accessing.”I don’t see why you have a duty to “not prevent” people from accessing unowned land that your land blocks access to. In general obligations or duties are those that correspond to negative rights only. There are not positive obligations. You can’t make something look like a negative obligation by clever wording– by saying “a duty to not prevent people from accessing” instead of “a duty to [let people use your property to access]” But then this way of wording it would show that it’s just an assertion and question-begging. There is no “contradiction’ entailed by not letting someone use your property to access remote unowned property. Even if there is, “contradicting” is not an act of aggression. In any case, you can’t just say that because an unowned tract is unowned, “homesteading it is permissible,” and thererefore, there ‘is a duty” not to prevent it. Saying it’s permissible only means that (a) the property has no owner, and that (b) IF someone is able to reach and possess and control and emborder it, then they would have established a link to it and become its owner.So I think the error may your sneaking in the loaded term “permissible” e.g. “If no one has a duty to not homestead the interior, then it is permissible to homestead the interior.” You are reading ‘is permissible” to imply that there is a duty not to allow it to happen. Look you can say it’s permissible for people to “eat food” or to “have food” and then you could say positive welfare rights are justified because otherwise you are “allowing them to starve” or “preventing them from having that which it is permissible them to have.” But saying it is permisisble for someone to have food only means that “having food” is not per se a rights violation–that if you are able to get food without violating rights, you have the right to do it. It doesn’t mean anymore than that.
***
Update: Re “Departurism” see:
- Sean Parr, “Departurism and the Libertarian Axiom of Gentleness,” Libertarian Papers 3, art. 34 (2011).
- Walter E. Block, “Evictionism is Libertarian; Departurism is Not: Critical Comment on Parr,” Libertarian Papers 3, art. 36 (2011).
- Sean Parr, “Departurism Redeemed — A Response to Walter Block’s ‘Evictionism is Libertarian; Departurism is Not: Critical Comment on Parr’,” The Journal of Peace, Prosperity & Freedom 2 (2013): 109–123.
Grok summary:
Block vs. Parr: Evictionism and Departurism
Walter Block’s evictionism and Sean Parr’s departurism start from the same libertarian premises: the fetus is a person from conception; an unwanted fetus is an innocent trespasser (no mens rea) on the woman’s body; abortion is conceptually two acts (removal + death); and the non-aggression principle requires that a trespass be stopped in the gentlest manner possible.
They diverge on what “gentlest” requires when eviction would kill the fetus.
- Parr (2011) — Gestation is already a process of departure from fertilization toward birth. Because the trespasser is leaving and is not a criminal, the owner may not use a lethal eviction while a non-lethal wait remains available. Lethal removal during a normal pregnancy therefore violates gentleness. The only exception is when the pregnancy itself endangers the mother’s life.
- Block (2011) — The woman may evict at any time. She may not directly kill the fetus, and she must notify others so they can try to save it, but she need not continue hosting it until viability. Requiring her to carry the pregnancy is a positive obligation and a denial of her property right in her body. Departurism, Block argues, is therefore unlibertarian.
- Parr (2013) — Block’s “notify then evict even if fatal” rule is the harsher, not the gentler, option. Waiting for continued departure imposes no extra positive duty; it is simply the least harmful way to end a non-criminal trespass that is already ending. Block’s notification requirement, by contrast, is a positive obligation and still permits a lethal shove. Consistency with gentleness outside the womb (you may not throw an incompetent departing trespasser off a fatal cliff when he will soon reach safe ground) requires the same inside the womb.
Stakes: Before viability, evictionism tracks the practical result of pro-choice (the evicted fetus dies); departurism tracks pro-life (the woman must wait). After viability both allow live removal. The dispute is not over personhood or trespass, but over whether libertarian gentleness forbids a lethal eviction of an innocent party who is already in the process of leaving.
***
From Grok: Kinsella would reject both frames as built on a bad analogy: the unwanted fetus is not a trespasser who wandered onto homesteaded land. The parents caused its existence and its location; you cannot treat a being you created in a state of total dependence as if it were an uninvited stranger and then “evict” it by a rule that just happens to kill it. Evictionism therefore smuggles a positive-looking result (lethal removal before viability) under a property-rights slogan that does not fit, while departurism smuggles the opposite result (a duty to host until birth) by stretching “gentleness” into an obligation to complete a process the woman never agreed to finish. For him the real issues are causal responsibility for creating a rights-bearing (or potentially rights-bearing) human, whether and when personhood attaches, and the limits of using force—not which metaphor, eviction or departure, better dresses up a conclusion already chosen.
***
Walter Block sent me a draft article “Does Trespassing Require Human Action? Rejoinder to Kinsella and Armoutidis an Evictionism,” MEST Journal (forthcoming 2025) and “invited” me to respond, whatever that means (I guess it means: “please change your priorities to suit my goals and spend your time writing this the article I want you to write instead of whatever article you were planning on writing”), presumably in aid of his stated goal of publishing 1000 peer reviewed or law review articles. 1 I assume he counts “MEST Journal,” whatever that is, as peer reviewed even though it seems unlikely it is actually refereed (he has four articles in 2025 alone in that journal). 2 I know from personal experience editing Libertarian Papers for ten years and from other publishing and peer reviewing experience how difficult and time-consuming it is. There is no way MEST Journal publishes this many papers and actually has them peer reviewed. But no matter. [continue reading…]
- Numerous personal emails; Stephan Kinsella, “A Tour Through Walter Block’s Oeuvre” (May 9, 2024): text at n.3. [↩]
- E.g., from Vol 13, No 1 (2025): REJOINDER TO RECTENWALD ON SUPPOSED ISRAELI WAR CRIMES and REJOINDER TO RECTENWALD ON SUPPOSED ISRAELI WAR CRIMES; from Vol 13, No 2 (2025): REJOINDER TO JOFFE ON THE COMPATIBILITY OF LIBERTARIANISM AND ZIONISM and REJOINDER TO ORWELLIAN LIBERTARIANISM: GORDON AND NJOYA’S TOPSY-TURVY WORLD OF TWILIGHT ZONE LIBERTARIANISM. [↩]
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