Overconsumption and Procreation: Are they Morally Equivalent?

Young, Thomas R.

doi:10.1111/1468-5930.00185

Cited by 55 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Proposals to reflect on procreation in ways that take into account the interests of people other than the procreators are also discussed by contemporary advocates of population engineering. These authors make two types of claims: Malthusian-inspired claims regarding the size of the population (Cafaro 2012;Das Gupta 2014;Hickey et al 2016;Rieder 2016;Young 2001) and eugenics-inspired claims regarding the structure of the population (Anomaly 2014(Anomaly , 2018Brock 2005). The first group focuses on the toll of bringing new persons into the world on resources and the environment.…”

Section: A Broader Framework: Present Proposalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The problem with reproductive freedom. Procreation beyond procreators’ interests

Cavaliere

2019

Med Health Care and Philos

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Reproductive freedom plays a pivotal role in debates on the ethics of procreation. This moral principle protects people's interests in procreative matters and allows them discretion over whether to have children, the number of children they have and, to a certain extent, the type of children they have. Reproductive freedom's theoretical and political emphasis on people's autonomy and well-being is grounded in an individual-centred framework for discussing the ethics of procreation. It protects procreators' interests and significantly reduces the permissible grounds for interference by third parties. In this article I show that procreative decisions have far-reaching effects on the composition and size of the population. The upshot of considering these effects allows for the appreciation of the inadequacy of a framework that solely considers individual (i.e. procreators') interests to discuss the ethics of procreation. To address such inadequacy, I assess costs and benefits of past and present proposals to reflect on procreation in such a way as to consider its far-reaching effects. I conclude by arguing that reproductive freedom should be defended as an imperfect but instrumentally necessary tool. This framing would enable those participating in debates on the ethics of procreative decisions to work towards an ethical framework that accounts for the cumulative effects of these decisions.

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Section: A Broader Framework: Present Proposalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The problem with reproductive freedom. Procreation beyond procreators’ interests

Cavaliere

2019

Med Health Care and Philos

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“…Because procreation can be understood to introduce benefits and impose harms (Harman 2004;McMahan 2009;Gardner 2015), procreative choices are subject to widespread moral scrutiny. Some have argued that parents can harm society by procreating; for instance, those who do not intend to care for their children impose burdens on the state, and those who produce many children in overpopulated societies cause harm in ways analogous to overconsumption (Young 2001). Others have emphasized the harms experienced directly by children, arguing that parents can sometimes harm their children simply by bringing them into existence (Arras and Blustein 1995;Benatar 1997;Shiffrin 1999).…”

Section: Shared Duties To Prevent Procreationmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is it to Share Contraceptive Responsibility?

Davis

2015

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There are three stages at which procreative outcomes can be prevented or altered: (1) prior to conception (2) during pregnancy and (3) after birth. Daniel Engster (Soc Theory Pract 36(2):233-262, 2010) has ably argued that plans to prevent or alter procreative outcomes at stages (2) and (3)-through abortion and adoptionintroduce financial, physical, and emotional hardships to which women are disproportionately vulnerable. In this paper, I argue that plans to prevent or alter undesirable procreative outcomes at stage (1)-through contraception use-similarly disadvantage women. I suggest that accounts proposing moral responsibilities to delay or permanently avoid procreation are insufficiently attentive to the methods through which undesirable procreative outcomes might be prevented and how such methods unfairly burden women. In conclusion, I propose several ways that men and women might more equitably share contraceptive responsibility.

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“…As much as calls to 'redefine prosperity' (Jackson 2009) may allude to ecological elites in the rich world who have grown weary of their material abundance, the picture definitely looks very different from the other side of the global divide. Moreover, while theorists of environmental citizenship tend to think of 'consumption' in a vulgar sense as in buying too many shoes or driving too big cars, it is easy to forget that simply having a child or a dog may be just as environmentally damaging (Young 2001). Using such a wider and more realistic definition of consumption also tells us how low a 'sustainable rate of consumption' would actually have to be in a world as populous as ours (assuming the current rate of technological innovation).…”

Section: Strategically Unfortunatementioning

confidence: 99%