Evictionism is Either Redundant or Contradicts Libertarianism: Response to Walter Block on Abortion

Abstract

The present paper is a response to Walter Block’s critique (Block 2024, 57–66) of our recent argument (Dominiak & Wysocki 2023, 527–540) against his theory of partial impermissibility of abortion called evictionism. This time, however, instead of targeting Block’s thesis that the unwanted fetus is a trespasser again, we take it for granted – merely arguendo, to be sure – and argue that even if this problematic thesis is admitted, evictionism should still be rejected as either unlibertarian or redundant vis-à-vis the otherwise well-established doctrine of killing and letting die. Our main argument focuses on the problematic nature of eviction and shows that requiring eviction as the gentlest method of stopping the unwanted fetus’s invasion of the woman’s rights involves burdening her with positive duties, an anathema to libertarianism. Presumably, the notion of eviction could be interpreted in a way that does not introduce positive duties into libertarianism. However, then eviction would be reduced to letting the fetus die, rendering the entire project of evictionism essentially superfluous as compared with the age-old doctrine of doing and allowing.