Editing Murray Rothbard (section)

=== Children's rights and parental obligations ===
In the ''Ethics of Liberty'', Rothbard explores issues regarding [[children's rights]] regarding self-ownership and contract.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.l4l.org/library/chilroth.html |title=Children's Rights versus Murray Rothbard's ''The Ethics of Liberty'' |first=John |last=Walker |year=1991 |publisher=[[Libertarians for Life]] |access-date=August 13, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910134053/http://www.l4l.org/library/chilroth.html |archive-date=September 10, 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref> These include support for a woman's right to abortion, condemnation of parents showing aggression towards children and opposition to the state forcing parents to care for children. He also holds children have the right to [[Runaway (dependent)|run away]] from parents and seek new guardians as soon as they are able to choose to do so. He argued that parents have the right to put a child out for [[adoption]] or sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract in what Rothbard suggests will be a "flourishing free market in children". He believes that [[Child-selling|selling children]] as consumer goods in accord with market forces—while "superficially monstrous"—will benefit "everyone" involved in the market: "the natural parents, the children, and the foster parents purchasing".<ref name="Children and Rights">{{cite book|author=Murray N Rothbard|title=The Ethics of Liberty|chapter=14 'Children and Rights'|isbn=978-0814775592|year=1982|publisher=LvMI|chapter-url-access=registration|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/ethicsofliberty00roth}}</ref><ref>See also: [[Ronald Hamowy|Hamowy, Ronald]] (editor) (2008). [https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC ''The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230109234738/https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC |date=2023 }}, [[Cato Institute]], Sage, pp. 59–61, {{ISBN|978-1-4129-6580-4}} {{OCLC|233969448}}</ref>

In Rothbard's view of parenthood, "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."<ref name="Children and Rights"/> Thus, Rothbard stated that parents should have the legal right to let any infant die by starvation and should be free to engage in other forms of [[child neglect]]. However, according to Rothbard, "the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children". In a fully libertarian society, he wrote, "the existence of a free baby market will bring such 'neglect' down to a minimum".<ref name="Children and Rights"/> Economist Gene Callahan of [[Cardiff University]], formerly a scholar at the Rothbard-affiliated Mises Institute, wrote that Rothbard allowed "the logical elegance of his legal theory" to "trump any arguments based on the moral reprehensibility of a parent idly watching her six-month-old child slowly starve to death in its crib".<ref name="Callahan">{{cite journal |last=Callahan |first=Gene |date=February 2013 |title=Liberty versus Libertarianism |journal=[[Politics, Philosophy & Economics (journal)|Politics, Philosophy & Economics]] |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=48–67 |doi=10.1177/1470594X11433739 |s2cid=144062406 |issn=1470-594X |oclc=828009007}}</ref>