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Debating Procreation: Is It Wrong to Reproduce?

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Debating Procreation: Is It Wrong to Reproduce? DEBATING PROCREATION DEBATING ETHICS General Editor Christopher Heath Wellman Washington University of St. Louis Debating Ethics is a series of volumes in which leading scholars defend opposing views on timely ethical questions and core theoretical issues in contemporary moral, political, and legal philosophy. Debating the Ethics of Immigration Is There a Right to Exclude? Christopher Heath Wellman and Philip Cole Debating Brain Drain May Governments Restrict Emigration? Gillian Brock and Michael Blake Debating Procreation Is It Wrong to Reproduce? David Benatar and David Wasserman 00-Benatar-Prelims.indd 2 19/03/15 3:42 PM Debating Procreation Is It Wrong to Reproduce? DAVID BENATAR DAVID WASSERMAN 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Debating procreation : is it wrong to reproduce? / David Benatar and David Wasserman. p. cm. — (Debating ethics) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978–0–19–933355–4 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–19–933354–7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Human reproduction—Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Life—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Benatar, David, author. II. Wasserman, David, author. BJ1335.D42 2015 176—dc23 2014042303 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper CONTENTS Introduction 1 By David Benatar and David Wasserman PART I ANTI-NATALISM By David Benatar 1. Introducing Anti-Natalism 11 2. The Asymmetry Argument 18 3. The Quality-of-Life Argument 40 4. The Misanthropic Argument 78 5. Contra Procreation 122 PART II PRO-NATALISM By David Wasserman 6. Better to Have Lived and Lost? 135 7. Against Anti-Natalism 148 vi | Contents 8. The Good of the Future Child and the Parent-Child Relationship as Goals of Procreation 182 9. Impersonal Constraints on Procreation 209 10. Alternatives to Impersonal Approaches: Birthrights and Role-Based Duties 228 Index 265 Introduction DAVID BENATAR AND DAVID WASSERMAN READERS OF A BOOK DEBATING the ethics of procreation would be excused for thinking that the book might be pre- mised on the assumption that procreation is sometimes permissible and would then discuss the conditions under which it is and is not morally acceptable. In fact, we shall be debating the more basic question—whether procreation is ever morally justifiable. On the face of it, there are only two responses to this ques- tion: “no” and “yes.” Those, in broad terms, are the views that we, respectively, defend. David Benatar argues that procre- ation is never morally permissible, while David Wasserman argues that procreation is sometimes morally permissible and that there can be positive value in creating children. However, as one should expect, there are numerous views on the ethics of procreation. For example, the view that procreation is sometimes permissible is actually a 2 | DEBATING PROCREATION range of views along the spectrum covered by the vague- ness of the word “sometimes.” To say that it is sometimes morally permissible to have children leaves open the ques- tion of how often it is permissible. Some views are more permissive; others less so. David Wasserman will examine some of these views and defend one account of when it is permissible to create children. The respective positions we take are not symmetri- cal. David Wasserman does not offer a categorical defense of procreation that mirrors David Benatar’s categorical attack. Although David Wasserman’s account is more per- missive than most mainstream views, he rejects the view that procreation can never be faulted on the grounds of harming or wronging the children brought into existence. Like David Benatar, he holds that procreation can harm and wrong the child created, as well as wronging other individuals. There is another asymmetry between our two posi- tions. The overwhelming majority of people think that pro- creation is generally morally acceptable and many of those are outraged at any suggestion to the contrary. Thus David Wasserman defends a general position that enjoys wide- spread support while David Benatar attacks a very fecund holy cow. The latter author, therefore, has the harder task of defending a “heresy.” Shifting metaphors, we are two Davids, but only one of us is attacking a Goliath. Thus, at least in terms of persuading people, David Benatar bears the burden of proof, although he argues that, given the harms of procreating, it is the defender of procreation who bears the moral burden of proof. Although the specific view that David Wasserman de- fends is not heretical, it is, at the very least, unorthodox. Introduction | 3 Unlike the majority of pro-natalists, he rejects the idea that that it is even pro tanto wrong to have a less happy child when one could have a happier one instead—or (what is not the same thing) a disabled one when one could have a non-disabled one instead. While agreeing that it is prob- lematic to select a less happy or a disabled child, he argues that it is also problematic for prospective parents to select against such a child—options that prospective parents increasingly have. He also argues that the intentions or motivation with which they have a child can affect the per- missibility of their actions, an equally unorthodox view. And he argues, here against David Benatar and the main- stream, that there is a perfectly intelligible sense in which prospective parents can create a child for reasons that con- cern the good of that child; indeed, that they should only procreate with such an intention. Both of us have written previously about procreation and the reader may want to know how what we say here dif- fers from what we have said before. In Part I, the axiologi- cal argument will be familiar to those who have read David Benatar’s Better Never to Have Been. However, whereas the argument was presented in fuller form there, only an over- view of it is presented here.1 This is in order to cater to the broader readership for which the current book is intended. It is nonetheless the most technical of the arguments in Part I. Readers daunted by more technical arguments can skip to the subsequent arguments in Part I. The core of the quality-of-life argument is also drawn from Better Never to Have Been, but it does not cover ex- actly the same ground. Some details of the earlier argu- ment have been omitted, but in other ways the argument has been expanded here. For example, the risk argument, 4 | DEBATING PROCREATION which is a version of the quality-of-life argument, is dis- cussed here in more detail than it was before. The misanthropic argument did not feature at all in Better Never to Have Been, where, because the focus was on the interests of the person brought into existence, all the arguments were philanthropic. The misanthropic ar- gument does not obviously show that it is better never to have been,2 but it does support the anti-natalist conclusion that it is better not to procreate. The concluding chapter of Part I surveys a number of considerations that might be advanced in favor of procre- ation, and argues that these are not sufficient to outweigh the anti-natalist arguments advanced in the previous chapters. In summary, then, the arguments in Part I consti- tute a clear and accessible statement of the arguments for anti-natalism. In Part II, David Wasserman offers his qualified de- fense of procreation. He begins with a critique of several anti-natalist arguments. He focuses on David Benatar, but also considers two other writers: Seana Shiffrin, who argues that procreation is morally problematic in imposing unconsented harm; and Matti Hayry, who maintains that every child faces the realistic possibility, however slight, of an awful life—an unacceptable risk that makes procre- ation wrongful. In each case, David Wasserman rejects the categorical claim, arguing that bearing children can be, and often is, permissible, despite the certainty of significant harm and the possibility of an awful life. He does not ad- dress David Benatar’s axiological argument in detail, which claims that procreation always harms the person created. That more technical argument has been subject to a great Introduction | 5 deal of technical criticism. David Wasserman contends that procreation need not wrong the child, even if it harms him in the sense that David Benatar claims. His principal tar- gets are David Benatar’s quality-of-life and misanthropic arguments.
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