Walter (Block) has been inundated with e-mails about vaccination. Here’s one more. Walter requested of me some of his exact quotes and the sources thereof. I provided him yesterday with the following.
Dear Walter:
My understanding of your theory of eviction is explained at length here, dated June 13, 2019.
Four days earlier, I provided quotes by you and explained your defense of evictionism as you posited it. My own comments on it were very short and didn’t express a full analysis.
Here are some additional quotes [of yours] from earlier years.
1. Block and Whitehead.
“Given this, how can we defend the mother’s right to kill the fetus? Simple. She owns her own body, and the unwanted fetus growing within it is in effect a trespasser or parasite.”
2. “And surely the fetus is human. Well, it’s not a chipmunk or a raccoon or a giraffe, is it? What else could it be, if not human? The conclusion is clear: the fetus is an alive human being. Killing a fetus is therefore murder.” (Reason, April 1978)
3. “Abortion then is justified because if the fetus is unwelcome it then becomes a trespasser inside the mother’s body. Since slavery is improper, the mother cannot legitimately be made a slave of the fetus and forced to accept its unwelcome trespass within her. Abortion is justified because continued unwilling pregnancy is a violation of the mother’s rights to her body.” (Ibid.)
4.“The position put forth here, in contrast, is one of eviction not of killing. However, if the only way to evict is by killing the fetus, then the woman’s right to her property – that is, her womb – must be held above the valuable life of the fetus.” (Compromising the Uncompromisable)
What I did yesterday was get right to the gist of your position as it stands in my mind and the minds of many others: “Block has argued that if A is pregnant and kills the baby within her, this is not murder.”
Removal without hope of survival is killing. Calling it eviction and labeling the baby a parasite doesn’t alter the fact that the baby dies through an act initiated by the pregnant female. If it is not murder, then what is it? Eviction? Sorry, no. A rose by any other name is still a rose.
Cordially,
Mike
9:05 am on May 13, 2020
