Darkover
Angelic
- Jul 29, 2021
- 4,808
When you bring a child into the world, you expose them to the risk of living a life not worth living. We can characterise such a life as more common than one might think (lot's of depressed people), and likely enough to procure as to warrant a moral duty being placed on abstaining from procreation. We can consider such a life as rife with suffering in the form of poor mental health, serious disability, loneliness, physical pain, debilitating stress, hardship, etc. These are outcomes that parents cannot fully guard against with certainty, and therefore procreation is wrong, since it exposes an individual to these risks.
The second part of my view is that not bringing a child into the world isn't a harm. You're not depriving anyone of anything when you don't procreate, it's not as if some unborn entity is harmed or wronged, they simply do not exist.
I don't believe prospective parents often consider the full range of implications involved in creating another person and often do it for purely selfish reasons.
Since it is absurd to suggest that a person can exist before it is conceived, it is also absurd to suggest that by not conceiving this hypothetical person you are in some way depriving 'it' of life, and of all the potential happiness that life may entail.
Since happiness is not guaranteed, and that a certain amount of suffering necessarily is - bringing into life a new person is imposing suffering onto another being and is therefore immoral.
The second part of my view is that not bringing a child into the world isn't a harm. You're not depriving anyone of anything when you don't procreate, it's not as if some unborn entity is harmed or wronged, they simply do not exist.
I don't believe prospective parents often consider the full range of implications involved in creating another person and often do it for purely selfish reasons.
Since it is absurd to suggest that a person can exist before it is conceived, it is also absurd to suggest that by not conceiving this hypothetical person you are in some way depriving 'it' of life, and of all the potential happiness that life may entail.
Since happiness is not guaranteed, and that a certain amount of suffering necessarily is - bringing into life a new person is imposing suffering onto another being and is therefore immoral.