License to Breed

Court: Deadbeat Dad Can Have More Kids — The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned a judge’s order that a man avoid having more children while on probation for failing to pay child support.

The court ruled 5-2 in favor of Sean Talty, saying his sentence was too broad because it did not include a method for lifting the ban if Talty caught up with his child-support payments.

Talty, 32, has seven children by five women. He was required to make “reasonable” efforts to avoid conception during his five-year probation after being convicted of not supporting three of the children.

Well it may not be the predominant libertarian view, but if I had to side here, I’d go with the lower court. This guy should be banned from having children. I’m sure this’ll give the chattering punks at Not Reason and libertines something else to chatter about.I am tempted to favor banning anyone without a job from having kids, but I guess that’s over the line.

I also differ from most libertarians in believing that by creating a child you incur enforceable obligations to the child, such as child support, etc. Libertarianism does not oppose “positive rights”; it simply says they have to be voluntarily incurred. One way to do this is by contract. Another is by trespassing against someone’s property: by doing this you incur liabilities, obligations toward that person. If you pass by a drowning man in a lake you have no enforceable (legal) obligation to try to rescue him, nor should you; but if you push someone in a lake you have a positive obligation to try to rescue them. If you don’t you could be liable for homicide. Likewise, if your voluntary actions bring into being a baby with natural needs for shelter, food, care, it’s akin to throwing someone into a lake. In both cases you create a situation where another human is in dire need of help and without he will die. By creating this situation you incur an obligation to provide for those needs.

To hell with hedonistic, libertine, atomistic, non-reality-based libertarianism if it robotically monotones that the child has no rights.

Share

1:09 pm on September 29, 2004