David Gordon challenges my argument that parents have an obligation to feed their children. The two blogs on this are here and here.

I will argue that children belong to parents, but that this gives parents no right to starve their children to death. That is equivalent to saying that parents have a duty to care for their children by feeding them, as long as they are in control and possession of their children.

Gordon agrees with me on responsibility of the parents, writing, “Rozeff is right that the parents made the child. They caused it to come into existence: they bear causal responsibility for it.” It’s the legal attribution of subsequent care that he suggests has not been shown. Can it be shown that parents have a legal obligation to feed their babies, or must we conclude, along with Rothbard, that parents have no such legal obligation? The “legal” here is under libertarian law.

Gordon asserts “Rozeff has not shown that, by bringing the child into existence, parents have the legal obligations he ascribes to them. He has merely asserted this, and in that way begged the question at issue.” He doesn’t show that I “merely asserted this”, and, in fact, I did not merely assert it. I mounted an argument rooted in libertarian law as enunciated by the non-aggression principle:

“One may raise the objection: But where do these obligations come from? They come from extending the non-aggression principle to instances where a person has voluntarily taken up a position wherein he has the capacity to initiate violence against others by not doing acts that are under his purview, acts that are obligatory given the positions and roles assumed by the person. If he stops piloting the plane, lets the car wander into other lanes, stops feeding a baby, or stops cleaning the food he’s selling, then he’s aggressing against others, without direct physical violence to be sure. But if a baby starves, who else is responsible but the parents?”

In other words, parents, I argue, aggress upon their children by not feeding them. If they die, the parents have murdered them by their inaction. Why is it murder? This is murder and aggression because they have assumed responsibility for their children by bringing them into existence.

This argument can be elaborated. After birth, parents and not others have control over the children and their feeding. They have a form of ownership that in this case demands care; and they have brought this on themselves. They placed themselves into the position of having to care for their children. Others did not do this. If the children die through starvation that owes to parental neglect, who is responsible, if not the parents? Someone is, and it isn’t other people or the child. Others didn’t starve the child, and the child did not starve itself. Cause and effect are at work. The parents are the cause; they withheld food. It’s murder if I lock you in a room and starve you to death. The legal obligation of the parents to feed their children arises because to do otherwise leads to murdering the children whose care is their obligation.

To put the matter in another way, the parents did not gain a right to murder their children once their children were born; they didn’t gain a right to neglect them by not feeding them. If it is said that they have this legal right, which is what Rothbard said, that is the same as saying that there is no crime, no murder. But if it’s not murder when the parents starve their child to death, then what is it?

Now, one may I suppose object that parents are not obliged to care for a child of theirs; but that is equivalent to saying that it is no aggression to starve human beings that are yours. Yes, I am assuming that children do belong to parents. I doubt that Gordon wants to deny that premise. But because children happen to be alive, that does not give parents a right to kill them. What sort of law would allow that? Libertarian law based upon non-aggression and self-ownership certainly do not allow such a thing, although Rothbard and maybe Gordon think it does until shown that it does not. Lacking that parental right means that as long as children are with parents, the parents cannot legally starve them.

The Best of Michael S. Rozeff