Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
An AI narration of the article 'Support for Abortion Has Corrupted Libertarian Theory' by Jake Desyllas.
Libertarian philosophy ought to offer a coherent and beautiful account of family life: parents bear responsibility for the children they create, parental authority and its limits flow from that responsibility, and children are recognised as individuals with inherent rights. Modern libertarianism does none of this. In this episode Jake argues that the corruption can be traced to a single assumption adopted in the mid-twentieth century: that libertarian theory must justify abortion. To accommodate that one position, libertarians have denied parental obligations, swapped a theory of inherent rights for one of acquired rights, abandoned the presumption of innocence, and written fathers out of the family entirely. Each distortion follows from the same root error — and each disappears once that error is corrected.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction 1:49 The Denial of Parental Responsibility 2:58 The Distortion of Rights Theory 5:08 The Abandonment of The Presumption of Innocence 6:21 The Invisibility of Fathers in Libertarian Theory 8:21 Conclusion
First published at jakedesyllas.com/blog/2024/8/20/support-for-abortion-has-corrupted-libertarian-theory on 20 August 2024.
An AI narration of the article 'Support for Abortion Has Corrupted Libertarian Theory' by Jake Desyllas.
Libertarian philosophy ought to offer a coherent and beautiful account of family life: parents bear responsibility for the children they create, parental authority and its limits flow from that responsibility, and children are recognised as individuals with inherent rights. Modern libertarianism does none of this. In this episode Jake argues that the corruption can be traced to a single assumption adopted in the mid-twentieth century: that libertarian theory must justify abortion. To accommodate that one position, libertarians have denied parental obligations, swapped a theory of inherent rights for one of acquired rights, abandoned the presumption of innocence, and written fathers out of the family entirely. Each distortion follows from the same root error — and each disappears once that error is corrected.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction 1:49 The Denial of Parental Responsibility 2:58 The Distortion of Rights Theory 5:08 The Abandonment of The Presumption of Innocence 6:21 The Invisibility of Fathers in Libertarian Theory 8:21 Conclusion
First published at jakedesyllas.com/blog/2024/8/20/support-for-abortion-has-corrupted-libertarian-theory on 20 August 2024.
