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Hello all, this is my first post here, I'll be sure to write something up in the appropriate forum for introductions but I just wanted to share something I've been working on and get some input from the community. The below are things I posted in facebook discussions, the first in response to a discussion between Michael Shanklin and Peter Joseph (oh, the joy!) and the other in a thread regarding abortion and equality of rights between men and women...I intend to keep thinking about and tinkering w/ the ideas and arguments, any feedback would be greatly appreciated. ----Regarding the "who owns children?" question. I think of it as though the parent is holding the child in trust for its future self. A trustee has certain duties and obligations to care for the property of another. If you're renting a home, you don't own the property but you do have custody and control of it and are obliged to at least call the landlord when the roof starts to leak.This all works very well with the competitive "child advocacy business" (CAB) scenario and I have little doubt such systems would be well funded if they can prove their effectiveness. CAB organizations could be tied into DRO contracts wherein the obligation and funding is purely contractual. Much like driving a car obligates you to have insurance that meets certain standards, having a child could require you to contract with a credible CAB or be dropped from the DRO for breach.I think an argument could be made that parents owe a few years of therapy if they "screw their kids up", to me this seems well within the scope of a CAB to set guidelines, make appropriate determinations and to effect remedies. The question of capacity determination (when the child's custody should be given back to itself) also seems quite within the scope of a DRO/CAB system. It seems likely that a CAB would offer parents real incentives to educate themselves in effective parenting strategies and to participate in regular evaluations (discount daaaahblecheck.)As per usual, you can remove yourself from the DRO system entirely to live in the woods and let the squirrels raise your children, good luck with that. regarding private dispute resolution in the case of one parent wanting to abort and the other not wanting it. note the morality of abortion is specifically not at issue. ---- Well, outside of the state system, private dispute resolution organizations (DRO) would take on the role of courts...to my mind, the closest analog we have to a DRO is an insurance company, like your auto insurance carrier...part of a DRO contract could be a clause regarding pregnancy, this could include the topic of abortion.Let's say I sign up w/ a DRO that has an anti-abortion clause, I agree not to initiate/advocate abortion and they agree to make attempts to not allow any of my progeny to be aborted. Part of the contract may include penalties if I sleep with women that have pro-abortion clauses in their DRO contracts, or separate agreements (contracts) with such women in order to avoid the penalties.So, I go out and shag a gal that's got a pro-abortion DRO contract...let's say her contract actually demands that she abort...as has been pointed out, we can't actually force that, but you could certainly encourage it with things like financial penalties or dropping their coverage entirely.So, I end up impregnating this gal, I immediately am penalized by my DRO and likely have to purchase a policy with a child advocacy business (CAB) before I can even resume coverage...but there's now a dispute between my (anti) DRO and hers (pro)...they're just businesses though and have only one interest -- making money by serving their customers interests -- so it all comes down to numbers, it's just a function of the market very similar to insurance payouts.So pro-DRO and anti-DRO do some calculations, let's say pro figures it'll cost them $1million -- from lost customers as well as CAB and child-rearing costs to go against their clients wishes to abort...pro-DRO figures it'll cost them $1.5million both from lost customers and and penalties they'll owe their client to go against his wishes to not abort...in this case, the negotiators sit down and the following agreement is reached -- if the woman will carry the baby to term, they'll (anti-DRO) pay her $500k; if she aborts, her DRO (pro-DRO) will pay $500k...these costs would likely be passed directly to the customers themselves...in other words, she's got a $1million incentive to have the baby.