Libertarian philosophy supports the pro-choice position

===Incoherence of Positive Rights===I'm glad my opponent agrees with me that positive rights do not fit into libertarian ethics. I was actually expecting my opponent to attempt a positive-negative synthesis of libertarian rights theory and am pleasantly surprised I don't have to deal with refuting that and therefore we can get to the crux of the debate. My opponent makes a crucial mistake in their proposed reductio ad absurdum. In attempting to show the absurdity of the idea that foetus' "have no right to be sheltered or otherwise taken care of by the mother", my opponent argues that it implies that parents have no obligation to care for their children post-utero. However, this is not the reductio that my opponent believes it is. Murray Rothbard (no lightweight in the realm of libertarian theory) in his book The Ethics of Liberty argues:"...the very concept of "rights" is a "negative" one, demarcating the areas of a person's action that no man may properly interfere with. No man can therefore have a "right" to compel someone to do a positive act, for in that case the compulsion violates the right of person or property of the individual being coerced."[1]....and from there...."Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die."[1]It is contradictory for my opponent to throw out the idea of positive rights on the one hand, yet assume their existence in the single sense of children, infants, and foetus'. If one does not have any positive obligation to perform actions and/or services for another (save for the case of contracts, though I will deal with why there is no contract in this case in the 'Contracts as Rights' point by my opponent) than it cannot logically follow that one also DOES have a positive obligation to perform actions and/or services for another. My opponent's point is in clear contradiction with libertarian ethics.===Foetus as an Aggressor===My opponent argues that I have not shown good reason why the foetus is in a position to justifiably have it's natural rights to life and non-interference interfered with. As I have earlier explained, the foetus (in the purely physical sense of the term, not the psychological sense of whether or had malice in mind) is aggressing against the right of non-interference of the mother by lodging within her body against her will. Just as in the case of the invited guest who does not leave at the request of the host (whether as a result of inability to move or general malice towards the host is wholly irrelevant in this case), the mother must have the right to remove unwanted lodgers if her self-ownership is to remain intact. The fact that this dislodging results in the death of the foetus is (while unfortunate), the only possible way for removal that does not either prologue aggression or invoke positive obligation on the mother.===Contracts as Rights===I would agree with my opponent that the fulfillment of contracts is a "right" as an extension of the right to exclusive non-aggressive use of one's property. My opponent argues that when a woman engages in consensual sexual activities knowing that it may well result in pregnancy, she is forming a contract with the foetus to carry it to term. Thus if the mother aborts the foetus, she is abandoning her contractual obligation to the foetus. There is a single flaw in my opponent's argument though and it stems from the definition of a contract. Libertarian legal theorist Stephan Kinsella echoes the general conception of the requirements to form a contract as "agreement between parties to exchangepromises or performance"[2]. However, since the foetus has no legal standing (in the same sense that a 9 year old has no legal ability to form contracts on their own), it lacks the ability to form a contract with anyone. Therefore, when the mother aborts the foetus, she is not abandoning any contractual obligation to the foetus and thus is not in antagonism to libertarian ethics.===Sources==[1] Murray Rothbard. The Ethics of Liberty. Ch. 14, Children and Rights. Available online at: http://mises.org... [2] http://mises.org...