There was much discussion this week of the death of Maria del Carmen Brousada, who three years ago gave birth to twins at the age of 66. News of her death–and the fact that her two children were left without a mother–was carried in nearly every major newspaper and news service. Ms. Brousada’s death was noteworthy because it stirred up–again–the whole hornet’s nest of whether women her age should be banned from receiving fertility treatments.
One of the more neutral articles ran on–of all places–Fox News, but it quoted a decidedly un-neutral party:
Allan Pacey, secretary of the British Fertility Society, said the organization recommends that assisted conception generally not be provided to women beyond the natural age of menopause.
“The rationale for all that is that nature didn’t design women to have assisted conception beyond the age of the natural menopause…once you get into the mid-50s, I think nature is trying to tell us something,” Pacey told The AP.
He added: “I think many people would worry about providing fertility treatment to women in their 60s. I think as a general rule, to embark on pregnancy when you may not see your child go to university is potentially a very difficult situation.”
Sorry, Dr. Pacey, I’m going to call bullshit on both these “reasons.”
Firstly, nature did not design the human reproductive system to do a lot of things it now routinely does. It didn’t design men to have erections on demand at 70. It didn’t design women–like me–to delay child-bearing for decades by taking hormones that stop ovulation. It didn’t design us to give birth by removing the baby through the abdominal wall. What nature designed us to do stopped troubling the medical community a long time ago.
Secondly, the whole “Oh, what about teh babeez?” cry doesn’t take into account that parents die all the time and leave their children behind. Mommies dying is always a dreadful thing. But so is daddies dying and I don’t see any bio-ethicists trying to stop men in their 60s from fathering children under the same rationale. If the sole concern here is: “She’ll die soon, so she has no business having a baby”, then we should deny men the same right, especially because men have a shorter life expectancy, and thus are even MORE likely to die when their children are young.
Should we deny fertility assistance to people who “may not live to see their children go to university?” I’d argue that it’s a very serious slippery slope. If we did decide to help only people with who can expect a long life post-childbirth, what’s the cut-off? That they must be of an age that they will live until their child is 16? 18? 21? That they have no pre-existing health conditions that might potentially shorten their lifespan? Because lots of people can be expected to die younger than the Western life expectancy of mid-70s.
Consider: a dear friend of mine in her mid-30s just had her first child with some help from fertility treatments. She has relapsing-remitting MS and while she’s healthy now, it’s possible that her MS will kill her before her child reaches adulthood. This is also true of a colleague who is having a child via a surrogate because chemotherapy for breast cancer–now in remission for six years–destroyed her fertility. It’s possible, although unlikely, that the cancer will return and kill her, but if it does, it will happen sooner rather than later, when her child is young.
Should we deny those women the right to fertility assistance? They might have a shorter than average life expectancy. Then again, so would a woman who smokes or who is obese or diabetic or who carries the BRCA genetic mutation. Should we deny them fertility treatments too?
See what I mean about that slippery slope?
I wouldn’t want to have a child in my 60s. But that’s my choice. Society needs to back the fuck off women who do. Medical technology makes things possible that strike us as distasteful or against our personal code of ethics (see: abortion, organ transplant, blood transfusion, euthanasia). But that does not give society the right to police other people’s medical decisions–including fertility treatments. Unless we’re going to send the uteri police after every woman–and man–who uses fertility treatments or is at increased risk of dying when their child is young, we don’t have the right to veto anyone’s reproductive choices, no matter what their age.
Found this very interesting discussion via feministing. So one of the broader questions I see here is, is it selfish or irresponsible to have a child if you may not have the resources to raise that child? In the case of age, those resources might be energy or longevity. But what about having a child (planned pregnancy) when you don’t have the economic means to support that child? On the surface, I might say that’s irresponsible or selfish. But that raises all sorts of red flags when you think about class issues… What are your thoughts?
@Sue – I would argue that there’s a difference between the two in that it is a failure of society that not everyone has sufficient resources to raise a child. However, it’s not a failure of society that people age. No matter how good medical science gets, we will never be immortal and eternally young (I guess unless it gets good enough that we can have robot bodies or something like that, but in that case I would say that we had failed as a society in far more significant ways). It’s not morally sound to say to people who are of a lower socioeconomic class, “You shouldn’t reproduce until we fix the fact that you’re poor — even though we have no clear plans for doing so and aren’t making very much progress in that direction” because it’s a fixable situation and it’s society’s fault that we’re not fixing it. But age isn’t a fixable situation. As such, it’s different to tell a person of advanced age that they shouldn’t do something that would be irresponsible because they are older, given that the irresponsibility of it is due to nature and not society.
You are right in that the discrepancy between society’s treatment of male vs. female older biological parents is hypocritical. You are also right that there is a chance that younger parents might die and orphan their children, and there would have to be a a cut-off age based on the probability of the parent(s) dying, which would have to be pretty arbitrary.
But you are also committing a tu quoque fallacy. Society’s failure to hold older men reproducing to the same standard as older women reproducing, or the fact that every biological parent is capable of leaving their child an orphan, does not mean that reproduction is a completely innocuous endeavor that should be nobody’s business but the parents’. You mock those who are concerned about “teh babeez” for their inconsistencies, but what you are saying is “fuck teh babeez; the hardships they experience as a result of their parents’ irresponsible reproductive choices should be completely ignored”. Care to explain why you
are privileging adults (or pubescent individuals) so much?
Why should liberty to breed trump all considerations for the people who will result from said breeding who neither asked nor consented to be born? Why shouldn’t we send the “uteri police” (or some form thereof that could be implemented in practice) after not only everyone who has an increased risk of dying when their child is young (since sometimes the child could actually benefit from it – what if its biological parents were horribly abusive?), but after everyone, period? Why is it better to side with the extreme of allowing people to give birth on their deathbed (which is what you are doing, basically), and not with the extreme that would prevent all children from experiencing hardships associated with the loss of parents (and all other hardships) by not bringing them into existence in the first place? Are you saying it is worse to restrict a single behavior (reproduction) than to prevent someone from imposing a lifetime’s worth of negative experiences on someone else? Why is it wrong for society to impose its will on people who seek to reproduce (only by restricting a single behavior), but perfectly OK for people to mess around and play god with other people’s entire lives with no other justification that those people used to be a part of their body for nine months?
Yes, when it comes to rights, getting pregnant is a bit more complicated than terminating a pregnancy, but historically (in the US, and I suspect elsewhere), the state and medical establishment has prevented “undesirable” women from having children through sterilization, forced contraception, etc. I’d rather err on the side of an individual woman making an unethical decision, than a doctor or review board or leglislative body making the unethical decision. This story is about age, but in reality, the disenfranchised woman is more likely to be poor or not-white or gay or otherwise marginalized.
So, much of what I think has already been stated, but I feel the need to throw my two cents in…
Being a strong advocate of a woman’s right to choose does not mean I have to defend a poor choice. Particularly when that choice involves another human being. It is not just a choice about her uterus, it is a choice about bringing another person into this world. Doesn’t this person have a right to a consistent, healthy caregiver throughout childhood? We can say that a 30 or 40 year old woman who has a child may be hit by a bus tomorrow or stricken with a fatal disease, but she is much more likely to live through her child’s adulthood than a new mother at 60. I’m not an actuary so I can’t give an actual statistic, but I think this is fairly obvious. And no, men should not be fathering children at that age either, but this case does not involve a man.
Animal rescues often don’t adopt out young animals to the elderly, but they will adopt out older dogs to them. Is this ageist? Or is it practical? This may seem like a weird analogy, but I think it’s appropriate as it speaks to what is considered when one is given/chooses the responsibility to care for another living being.
I am clearly no lawyer. What I meant about the motorcycle helmets is that one common argument against wearing helmets is “it’s my body, my choice to risk it,” which sounds reasonable, but the law sometimes doesn’t agree.
And, I would add, medicine doesn’t always agree, either. Just because a patient comes to me and asks me for a procedure and says they’re willing to risk it, doesn’t mean I should do it. A 60+ woman wanting to get pregnant is really asking the doctor to treat her normal (for her age) infertile state. She doesn’t have a medical problem. It then becomes the doctor’s responsibility to consider the associated health risks for her and the potential fetus. And, sadly, these days the doctor also has to consider the potential liability issues, even though I wish that wasn’t so.
So as long as the woman needs medical assistance with her desire to get pregnant, I don’t think we’re ever going to reach a point where hers is the only opinion taken into account.
“Because getting pregnant requires cooperation from at least one other party. In this woman’s case, medical professionals too. Does anyone have the right to strong-arm another person into helping her get pregnant?”
Of course no one has the right to force someone else into helping them get pregnant. But why should someone be denied the ability to get pregnant if they have people willing to help them achieve that goal. Pregnancy requires a second party whether you have fertility issues or not.
Some women can get pregnant through sex with a willing partner, and I’m sure most people on this thread would agree that we shouldn’t be able to dictate which of these women are allowed to reproduce. Other women may need the aid of a willing doctor and egg/sperm donors to get pregnant. Why should we be able to decide (based on age, economic status etc.) which of the second group of women are allowed to reproduce? In both cases the women have willing partners and the capacity to become pregnant. It may be easier to place restrictions on the women who need fertility treatments, but that doesn’t make it right.
@pedimd: I don’t buy that argument at all. Doctors treat people for “normal for their age” condition involving their reproductive systems all the time. Viagra treats normal age-related erectile dysfunction. Hormone replacement treats normal symptoms of menopause. Flomax treats normal age-related BPH.
Fertility treatments are a game-changer. If women can and do get pregnant, then the whole notion of “too old to get pregnant” has changed, and doctors will have to learn to deal with it.
@CM – Oh, now that’s just facile. What you are proposing is absurd, because parents are humans and humans are imperfect. We already have a system in place to remove children from the care of abusive parents, imperfect though that system clearly is. But what about parents who aren’t abusive and yet still manage to “mess around and play god with other people’s entire lives” and impose “a lifetime’s worth of negative experiences on someone else”? What you are suggesting is that someone in society should come up with a set of standards (which could only possibly be subjective and therefore somewhat arbitrary) and then prevent other people from reproducing using those standards. Reproduction is not as insignificant a thing as you seem to think; rather, it is the entire goal of any species’ existence. And for what purpose would you propose to essentially destroy the idea of blood relations (given that apparently the parent-child bond has no deeper basis than “those people used to be a part of their body for nine months”)? It seems to me like you are proceeding with the goal of reducing emotional hardship. But emotional hardship is a part of life for everyone, even people with amazingly wonderful parents — no matter what anyone does, emotional hardship will still be a part of life.
@pedimd – You’re right that it sounds reasonable as a phrase, but ultimately that’s just rhetoric. We don’t live in an anarchist society, so you don’t have the freedom to do whatever you want with your body (the clear example is that you don’t have the freedom to take my stuff with it; that doesn’t involve my body, only yours, but you still don’t have the right to do it). The law is concerned with more things than just bodily autonomy; it’s also concerned with public costs, well-being on a population level, etc.
“So as long as the woman needs medical assistance with her desire to get pregnant, I don’t think we’re ever going to reach a point where hers is the only opinion taken into account.”
But there’s a difference between a doctor’s opinion of what is safe and a doctor’s opinion of what is advisable. Again, it is obvious that it is safe for some women of Brousada’s age to bear children. The doctor’s opinion of what is advisable, therefore, should be irrelevant. A doctor could only possibly have an opinion on that sort of question in a society where it is conceivable that a woman might not have total control of her own reproduction.
@Spark – Totally agree with everything you’ve said.
@baraqiel — Yes, that absolutely makes sense about society’s failings in terms of class. Good distinction.
baraqiel, CM is actually not suggesting that “someone in society should come up with a set of standards (which could only possibly be subjective and therefore somewhat arbitrary) and then prevent other people from reproducing using those standards.” S/he is suggesting that nobody should have kids, ever (see the third paragraph).
Plenty of people will disagree with CM’s suggestion, but you can’t say it’s subjective or arbitrary, since it treats everyone equally.
Again, if we’re talking in the legal sense, I think it’s a horrible idea. What would be the punishment for accidental pregnancy? If we’re talking about promoting not having children as an ethical choice, though, it’s got its virtues.
@Jessica – I interpreted that to mean that the “uteri police” would remove children from unfit parents, but you may certainly be right.
However, just because it applies to everyone doesn’t mean it’s not arbitrary — if I declare right now that I will react to all human beings I encounter henceforth as if they were hungry grizzly bears, that would apply to everyone but still be arbitrary given that I have no logical reason for doing so.
Also, you can definitely make a case that not having children is an ethical decision, but only under two conditions, it seems to me. Either one must use the premise that it would be a good thing for humanity to continue to exist and then use the fact that standard of life would increase on average if population decreased to say that it is ethical for some people to decide to not have children, but that it would be bad if everyone decided to; or, one must use the premise that it would be a bad thing for humanity to continue to exist. If you’re right and CM is arguing that no one should be allowed to reproduce, then it seems to me that CM must prove the latter, which I see no evidence of. Moreover, if that’s really the end goal, there are much faster ways to accomplish it — I’m certain we have enough nukes to kill everyone, for example.
Jessica is right, baraqiel. I’m arguing that
all reproduction is unethical from the humanitarian/negative utilitarian perspective. The values themselves are, of course, arbitrary, but so are all values since there is no such thing as absolute morality/ethics; we can’t really judge systems of ethics as being objectively “good” or “bad”, we can only judge them as being internally consistent or not. My system does, however, apply the same standards to all individuals equally, whereas yours does not (yours gives consideration to people who want to reproduce, but not to those who will inevitably exist as a result of their reproduction).
Feminists generally value things like self-determination, consent, and equality, and condemn the use of people as means to an end. But most feminists have a huge blind spot when it comes to voluntary reproduction. Reproduction imposes very serious consequences on humans who did not and, in fact, could not have given their consent to experience them. The relationship of children to parents is necessarily that of subordination. While it is justified in the case of those children who already exist (since their cognitive development is not always sufficient to ensure their own well-being), why would a feminist want to unnecessarily subject a whole new person to such an unequal and controlling relationship? And, of course, people reproduce to preserve their genes, to give them a sense of purpose, to boost their social status or give them the illusion of immortality or because babies are cute and they want one to play dress-up with. It’s all about themselves and their interests. Being conceived and gestated can never be in your child’s interests since s/he does not have interests prior to existing. Hence, biological children are always used as means to an end, and while you might argue that it does not matter since most people don’t mind having been born, what about those who do? Perhaps you’ve heard of anarchists objecting to the idea that one can consent to the state’s authority since this authority has existed since before they were born and they
were never given the option to reject it. It’s the same idea with reproduction, really.
“Reproduction is not as insignificant a thing as you seem to think; rather, it is the entire goal of any species’ existence.”
A species is not some magical entity that thinks and has goals; individuals do (among the intelligent species, at least). I am an individual whose goal is to contribute to voluntary human extinction, for instance, and there is a number of other individuals with the same goal, and yet we are all part of the species. Besides, what you are saying is kind of tautological. The entire goal of any species’ existence is to… exist? But why should we? You cannot derive an ought from an is.
And I honestly don’t know how
you deduced nuking everyone from the idea that people should not be used as means to an end and not have things imposed on them (nuking them would be quite an imposition, don’t you think?).
But as far as proof goes… Imagine two people. One has the ability to recover from any illness very quickly, but the other doesn’t. Plus, the first one really enjoys the taste of her medicine, and while she would rather not get sick at all and just have the medicine, she only gets prescribed the medicine when she gets sick. The second person doesn’t care for the taste of any medicine one way or the other. Which one would you rather be? It’s a no-brainer, right? The first one, of course. Except the second person does not need this ability because she will never get sick. Now which one would you rather be?
It’s really the best analogy I’ve heard as far as comparing existence (even relatively happy existence) to non-existence goes. If you had not been born, you would not have had any negative experiences at all and would not have wanted or needed any of the positive experiences that the now-existing you have had. And everybody has negative experiences, even though they might not be the same for everybody.
This is only to compare existence to never having come into existence. It does not imply that everyone who is already alive should commit suicide (although I think assisted suicide should be available to those who want it). You are the only person who can say whether or not your life is worth continuing according to your values and priorities.
But if we wanted to prevent harm from happening to more people, we would stop reproducing. It’s the most quick and easy way to solve all the world’s problems. Just imagine – within a hundred years, give or take, no one would have cancer or HIV or Huntington’s disease, there would be no wars, no rape, no genocide, etc. All human suffering would end. Could you guarantee even remotely similar results with people’s continued existence? I think not.
Jessica, accidental pregnancy would definitely be problematic, and I’m not advocating forced abortions or anything like that. Universal sterilization sounds kind of Orwellian, too, but maybe it’s just because we are not used to the idea. I mean, it wouldn’t be that different from vaccinations – those are administered to prevent infections from spreading, and life certainly qualifies as a sexually transmitted disease. And it’s already illegal to knowingly infect someone with HIV in some jurisdictions, so why not life?
But I think that even a lot less drastic measures would work. If, by some unlikely chance, most people started giving a shit about children’s rights, reproduction would be considered child abuse and infants could be removed from their biological parents (who would have to be the reactionary minority for this situation to even be plausible) immediately at birth and parented communally. I think if people didn’t have access to their biological child after its birth and were unable to indoctrinate/raise it how they wanted, that alone would significantly curb reproduction. I could be wrong, of course, but I think most people are in control of their urge to reproduce. Most people spend the majority of their lives practicing contraception, after all, and usually plan having a child at the time they find most enjoyable and convenient for them. Abortion would have to be a lot more accessible and early abortion promoted as preferable to carrying the fetus to term (there would have to be a lot less fundies than there are now for that to happen, of course).
@CM -
1) We apparently agree that people who have been born and feel strongly that they would rather not be alive do in fact have the option to kill themselves. You seem to fall into this camp. Is that a valid observation?
2) My system does not treat people who want to reproduce and people who are produced differently. In fact, both have exactly the same rights. Both have the right to reproduce and neither have the right not to have been born.
3) When I say the “goal” of a species, I do not mean in a conscious but rather a biological sense. A species is a failure if (when) it becomes extinct. Until that point, a species is succeeding, biologically. The biological imperative of any organism is to perpetuate its genes, nothing else.
4) You seem to be positing that human suffering is a thing that is so terrible that human experience is never worth it. And yet, many people believe that the majority of their experiences have been positive in some way, even the ones that were unpleasant, and that the pleasant experiences outweigh the unpleasant. Are you saying that all of these people are wrong about their own lives? Or that someone who has had cancer, or is HIV positive, or has been raped can’t have a life that is fulfilling and worthwhile? Moreover, by having compared life to HIV, you are stating a view that life can only possibly be a bad thing. Please prove this, since it is clearly not the case that the existence of suffering makes life a thing that is universally viewed as unequivocally bad.
5) I do not arrive at nuclear annihilation from a lack of imposition. I arrive at nuclear annihilation from the fact that it would also end all human suffering and in a lot less time than 100 years. This is not a new thought, but rather one that is a common objection to negative utilitarianism and one that I do not believe has been satisfactorily answered.
@ BeckySharper: “Normal for age” conditions such as BPH are treated when they lead to symptoms. I’m not sure that I would classify infertility as a “symptom” of menopause. Menopause is the built-in natural endpoint. Infertility is what is supposed to happen. I understand that what you’re saying is that with the amazing technology that is available, we no longer need to pay attention to what is “natural.” That is fair enough, medical technology can do wonderful things, but can also be a slippery medical ethical slope. To take your argument to the extreme — should doctors help women in their 70′s, 80′s, or 90′s to get pregnant? Would you really not draw the line somewhere? Would you really think I was a responsible doctor if I went along with a 75/85/95 year old woman who wanted to get pregnant?
@ baraqiel: “”The doctor’s opinion of what is advisable, therefore, should be irrelevant. A doctor could only possibly have an opinion on that sort of question in a society where it is conceivable that a woman might not have total control of her own reproduction.” This is my point — we do live in a society where infertile women are not in total control of their own reproduction. They need medical help to reproduce and that involves doctors. Unless the elderly woman in question is also a fertility specialist, she is most likely going to be relying on doctors’ opinions about how and whether to proceed. So I think that makes what the doctor thinks very relevant.
I would say that it is obvious in retrospect that it is safe for some women of advanced age to bear children. But it’s not always so obvious in advance. And since not that many women over 60 have given birth so far, I’m not sure that the safety is really that obvious at all. All we have at this point is anecdotal evidence. So I’m not entirely sure it would be medically responsible (if it were even possible) for infertility doctors to just go ahead and help any seemingly healthy 60+ woman to get pregnant.
And, as I said before, it would certainly be setting that doctor up for potential liability problems. In an ideal world, that’s not the way it should be, but there it is. When a bad outcome eventually happens (as it will), the fact that it was the woman’s decision to go ahead with treatment will not exclude the doctor from being blamed.
@CM: Yes, let’s all cease reproducing. Problem solved.
Thanks, that was really…helpful? Or at least verbose.
[...] of the entry (blog: The Pursuit of Harpyness-I could write for an entire day about that choice of title [...]
“We apparently agree that people who have been born and feel strongly that they would rather not be alive do in fact have the option to kill themselves.”
Actually, I disagree that they do in fact have the option to kill themselves. Unless you think that back before abortion was legal, giving oneself an abortion with a coat hanger was a perfectly viable option. But I think suicide *should* be a real option for those who want it.
“You seem to fall into this camp. Is that a valid observation?”
What business is it of yours? Do you judge the validity of people’s arguments based on the personal details of their lives? This is
an inappropriate personal question, and you are jumping to conclusions based on no evidence whatsoever (which is a bit ironic given your demands for evidence earlier).
“My system does not treat people who want to reproduce and people who are produced differently. In fact, both have exactly the same rights. Both have the right to reproduce and neither have the right not to have been born.”
Well, that’s a bit like saying “gay people have the same rights as straight people; they can both marry someone of the opposite sex”, isn’t it? Not everyone wants to reproduce; in fact, some people actively try to avoid it because they see it as ethically reprehensible. No one has the right to not have been born? What do you mean by that? I don’t think such a right can be applied retroactively, but do you mean to say that the fact that people are brought into existence without their consent is not problematic? Or somehow justified by the fact that you are granting everyone the right to reproduce? Does it work like indentured servitude where you are rewarded by the opportunity to have some indentured servants of your own later? What if someone finds the idea of indentured servitude repugnant? They are not getting anything in return for doing their time, so to speak. Once again, you are privileging those who want to reproduce.
“When I say the “goal” of a species, I do not mean in a conscious but rather a biological sense. A species is a failure if (when) it becomes extinct. Until that point, a species is succeeding, biologically. The biological imperative of any organism is to perpetuate its genes, nothing else.”
And this is relevant to reproductive ethics how, exactly?
“And yet, many people believe that the majority of their experiences have been positive in some way, even the ones that were unpleasant, and that the pleasant experiences outweigh the unpleasant. Are you saying that all of these people are wrong about their own lives?”
I specifically said the opposite in my post above (i.e., “You are the only person who can say whether or not your life is worth continuing according to your values and priorities”). My point, however, is that had they not been born, they would not have needed those positive experiences and could have avoided the negative ones. This is true regardless of the amount of suffering one experiences, or one’s own assessment of one’s quality of life (people do tend to be biased towards optimism, however). Hence, coming into existence always constitutes a net harm, even if the suffering is minimal. In any case, you are basically repeating the same argument I already addressed when I said “while you might argue that it does not matter since most people don’t mind having been born, what about those who do?” You failed to answer that question. If your answer is that they could always kill themselves using DYI methods and risk excruciating pain or, in case they fail, detention, forcible treatment, disfigurement, potential paralysis and a plethora of other consequences just so some people could have a human dolly to play with for a few years, does it strike you as a maximally fair arrangement? Besides, not everyone who would have preferred to not have been born wants to die. In fact, a lot of antinatalists, myself included, consider death undesirable not just because the process of dying is unpleasant, but because they don’t want to hurt people they care about, or just have a strong, if not rationally founded, survival instinct, or because given the options of life and death, life is preferable, even though never existing would have been the best option. Survival instinct is pretty hard to overcome, even for someone who actually wants to die.
“Or that someone who has had cancer, or is HIV positive, or has been raped can’t have a life that is fulfilling and worthwhile?”
They can. In fact, they could have a better life than someone who has neither of those problems since, once again, people’s experiences are subjective and varied. But what are you trying to say? Are you saying that the fact that some (but not all, by any means) victims of the aforementioned things can have lives they find fulfilling and worthwhile means there is nothing wrong with subjecting people to the risk of
getting cancer or HIV, or being raped (which is what you do when you reproduce, not to mention subjecting them to certain death)?
“Moreover, by having compared life to HIV, you are stating a view that life can only possibly be a bad thing. Please prove this, since it is clearly not the case that the existence of suffering makes life a thing that is universally viewed as unequivocally bad.”
I only compared life to HIV because it’s sexually transmitted, not because it can only possibly be a bad thing (besides, per what you said earlier, some people could even view something like HIV as positive in some way). And what does the fact that life is not universally viewed as bad have to do with anything? The fact that it is not universally viewed as good is not stopping you from thinking that it’s okay to impose it even on those who will find it to be bad. And I hope I don’t need to tell you that people’s views do not necessarily follow from reality. The view that women were inferior to men was universal until recently, and is still highly prevalent. Does it mean it’s true? Regardless, I never made any universal statements about whether or not anyone’s life is worth continuing once they are already alive. I hope I have made that clear by now. My only statement has been that never coming into existence is preferable to existence because you completely avoid suffering and have no need for positive experiences. That, and that it’s inconsistent for people who claim to value self-determination, equality, and consensualism to reproduce or defend reproduction, let alone using those same values to somehow justify it (and taking it to extremes), as BeckySharper is doing in her post.
As for your nuclear annihilation fantasies, they are only relevant if everyone agrees they want to get nuked. If there are existing people who would prefer to maximize their lifespan (and, obviously, there are), then nuking the whole world is not the optimal solution since it’s possible to arrange both for those who want to die quickly and painlessly and those who want to live as long as possible. No need to introduce paternalism into the equation.
In any case, you have not even attempted to justify your view that people’s reproductive drives deserve more consideration than preventing harm for the greatest number of people, or that people are entitled to use their children as means to an end. Perhaps you think it does not need justification because it is widespread, but once again, it does not mean it should be unquestioningly accepted.
@CM –
“No need to introduce paternalism into the equation.”
I didn’t. That argument and the pinprick argument are the most common responses to your philosophy of negative utilitarinism. They are so common that they are on the wikipedia page.
As I said before, no, I don’t think that the fact that people are brought into existence without their consent is problematic because, as I said, people who don’t like it can always fix it themselves. Personally, I like life! I think it’s fun! I’m pretty grateful that I was born to enjoy all the awesome things in the world. But if I wasn’t, I would not hesitate to remedy the situation in whatever way seemed appropriate.
“Do you judge the validity of people’s arguments based on the personal details of their lives?”
No. I judge the validity of people’s arguments based on their consistency, which is something I believe you already endorsed. You stated explicitly that being born “always constitutes a net harm”. If you really, truly believe that everyone would have been better off without being born, then that includes yourself. And yet, the fact that you are here talking to us indicates that you have not remedied the situation.
I don’t buy your arguments about suicide. Some methods are more painful than others, yes, but it’s not difficult to successfully commit suicide — most people who fail didn’t mean to kill themselves in the first place, but rather were hoping to be saved (this is a common psychological opinion). So what if it’s painful? It could only possibly be less painful than the sum total of all the suffering that one might go through if one were to continue to live. It is nonsensical to say that the state of death is worse than the state of life, but the state of life is better than the state of nonexistence, unless you believe in an afterlife. If you don’t, then death is the same thing as nonexistence.
Your objection to suicide is basically saying, “But what if people don’t want to for irrational reasons?” to which I can only answer, “Then they can suck it up.” This is why I am not privileging people who want to reproduce: because everyone absolutely does have the option of suicide (your comparison to abortion is inane; back-alley abortions were not effective and were dangerous whereas there are easily accessible means of suicide that are effective, and all are meant to be dangerous). “Some people don’t want to take that way out” is not an argument. You can’t stop existing without dying. They can wait for it to happen naturally or they can do it themselves.
The thing is that negative utilitarianism, as an argument, is ridiculous. Yes, if no one existed, then no one would want to exist. Great! That gets us nowhere. People now exist. People enjoy existing. People want to continue to exist and want to give the gift of existing to their children. I think, in fact, that your philosophy is extremely unfair to people who enjoy existing, and here I include people in the future. In my “system”, as you say, people who don’t e njoy existing have the option to stop, but in yours, people who would enjoy existing don’t have the option to start. Why are you privileging really sad people?
Okay, this is Becky’s thread, but I’m wading in to blow the whistle. CM: You’ve made your (long-winded, unnecessarily obfuscated) point. Not only is this massive thread-drift, you’re over the line into trollery. baraquiel: you’re a braver woman than I to engage with this piffle, but Don’t Feed The Trolls.
PhD – Sorry! CM’s is an argument I’ve never come across before, so I find it interesting, but I accept the whistle-blow. As always, thank you, Harpies, for the space to converse.
Hmm, way to go PhDork. Someone who doesn’t agree with you=troll. I know this is Becky’s thread, and my first comment was addressing her point that just because nobody is trying to prevent most people from reproducing, then everyone should be able to, and it’s okay, since all reproduction has some (unknown for certain) capacity to negatively affect the resulting child. But it’s that very effect that makes reproduction ethically problematic.
Imagine we reframed the discussion about reproductive choices a bit and were instead discussing whether or not it’s okay to prevent men from exercising a reproductive choice to impregnate their significant others without their consent (not by violently raping them, but by puncturing holes in condoms or switching their BC to sugar pills, for instance), or in any way condemn the practice of forcible impregnation through BC sabotage or do anything about it. Now imagine if Becky had said “I wouldn’t want to sabotage anyone’s birth control. But that’s my choice. Society needs to back the fuck off people who do”.
I imagine that idea would have got torn to shreds here because the choice to force a pregnancy on someone is nothing like the choice to order strawberry ice cream instead of vanilla, or have consensual sex with another adult you find attractive as opposed to celibacy. It’s not the same because it has profound effects on the life of an unconsenting party (the woman). Hopefully, no one would try to defend forcible impregnation by saying “But it’s okay because most women want to reproduce and get pregnant at some point [which they do]. Besides, a lot of women got pregnant unintentionally and are now happy that they did and carried the pregnancy to term, and their child is a little surprise miracle. If you don’t like that you got forcibly impregnated, you could always get an abortion. I am happy that I got my BC sabotaged, and if you are not, you can fuck off.”
You get the idea. But forcible impregnation is not the only reproductive choice that affects an unconsenting party. All reproduction does. So why the different reactions? If most people didn’t mind being forcibly impregnated, would forcible impregnation become a non-issue even for those who do?
As for my side discussion with baraqiel (who
not only has no idea what s/he is talking about when it comes to anything to do with suicide, but still fails to grasp the most basic tenets of antinatalism, which leads her/him to make nonsensical comments like “people who would enjoy existing don’t have the option to start”, even though people’s potential and actual experiences are only relevant if they do exist at some point – and most pregnancies result in actual, existing people), it just goes to show that uncommon ideas are usually misunderstood and dismissed out of hand, even among people who themselves embrace relatively uncommon views (i.e., feminism). I often find myself engaging in lengthy explanations in public fora because it seems that my original (and highly relevant to the OP) comment is somehow unclear, only to get accused of derailing the thread, with no one bothering to answer my original argument at any point in the discussion.
In any case, I hope that comments here don’t have to be of the back-patting variety to be taken seriously.
CM: You’re done. You’ve had your say. Thanks for playing. Any future comments by you on this post will be deleted.
I don’t see CM’s remarks as trolling. Thread-drift, yes, but there’s been a fair amount of that in this thread because it’s inherently a large and sprawling topic.
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