Why Have Children?: The Ethical Debate

9 Overpopulation and Extinction

9 Overpopulation and Extinction The discussion in previous chapters has demonstrated and defended several ethical principles for procreative choices. First, it is essential to recognize and respect the reproductive rights described in chapter 2. Human beings have a right not to reproduce; hence, there is no general obligation to procreate. Human beings also have a right to reproduce in the negative or liberty sense—that is, a right not to be interfered with in their procreative behavior and a limited right to reproduce in the positive or welfare sense. Second, as the discussion in chapter 3 demonstrated, we must keep in mind the gendered nature of reproduction: procreation requires much more of women than of men, and this will remain the case even if a safe and successful form of ectogenesis is developed. One must consider the material contexts in which people make decisions about procreation and the social environments in which they will raise their children, not just hypothetical thought experiments with no connection to the challenges real people face. Third, as I showed in chapters 4 and 5, most of the traditional reasons that have been given for having children are weak and easily defeated. Nonetheless, justified decision making about procreation must be based at least on a consideration of the consequences of our procreative decisions and in particular of their effects on existing children and on women. There is no obligation to produce as many children as possible, even if doing so will maximize the amount of good in a particular society. Fourth, it is always wrong to use any person primarily as a means to an end, and infants, children, and women are particularly vulnerable to being so used in procreative decisions. Fifth, as chapter 6 showed, children are neither benefited nor harmed by coming into existence. Mere existence is not in itself a beneficial or harmful property. Instead, we must always “look and see” whether 174 Chapter 9 persons are benefited or harmed throughout their existence in order to know whether it is good or not that they came into existence. Even if a possible person is likely to have a good life, there is no obligation to any such hypothetical nonexistent person to bring him or her into existence. We can distinguish between future people and possible people, the set of all future people being a subset of the set of all possible people. Future people are the set of all people who will definitely exist at some point after the present as a result of our actions and choices. Possible people are those who might or might not exist, depending on which choices we make. We are not in a position to know which ones, among all the possible people, will actually be future people, although we can presumably make predictions about at least some of them, those who will be our very near descendants—our grandchildren, perhaps. But possible people do not have a right to come into existence, and no one is wronged if he or she is not created. As James Lenman remarks, “No matter what happens, we can always suppose there to be an infinity of possible individuals who never get to exist. But it is hard to make much sense of the thought that this is a bad thing—either for the individuals themselves or otherwise” (2004b, 139). Sixth, as chapters 7 and 8 showed, many of the reasons typically proffered to support an obligation not to procreate are not very strong. There is, for example, no obligation not to reproduce because of failure to follow Julian Savulescu’s Principle of Procreative Beneficence (PPB). Yet it is easier to justify a decision not to procreate than to justify a decision to procreate because in the latter case the child’s potential well-being will be affected. There is a strong moral responsibility to undertake procreation only if one is very likely to be the kind of parent who will enable a child to flourish. But sexuality, relationship status, age, and impairment have no necessary relationship to parental ability. Whether there is a responsibility not to procreate is strongly dependent on the prospective parent’s or parents’ environment and social context. Philosopher Michael Bayles assumes that people always make decisions about whether to have a(nother) child “in isolation” from consideration of the decisions made by other families (1979, 19). In a way, he is right; an individual or couple planning a family does not ask what the individual...