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.

“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?

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.

Thanks, that was really…helpful? Or at least verbose.