On the Consent-Based Argument for Anti-Natalism

According to the consent-based argument for anti-natalism, procreation is always morally problematic insofar as it involves imposing serious and protracted harm on children without their consent and without an appropriate justification, for unlike other cases in which we are morally permitted to harm others without their consent, imposing the harms of existence is not necessary to prevent children from experiencing greater harm. In recent years, several philosophers have issued responses to this argument that attempt to avoid its anti-natal implications. For instance, some have rejected the principle that it is wrong to non-consensually impose harm on persons who are not otherwise at risk of experiencing greater harm; others have sought to demonstrate that this principle is not in fact violated in the case of procreation, either because we are permitted to act paternalistically on behalf of the children we create and so do not require their consent to the harms of existence or because we are normally justified in inferring their consent hypothetically; and others have sought to demonstrate that procreation may nevertheless be permissible if parents perform compensatory duties to their offspring or take sufficiently robust measures to minimize the harm they are likely to experience over the course of their lifetimes. My objective in this paper is to show why these arguments are less persuasive than they initially appear, and hence why the consent-based argument for anti-natalism still presents a serious challenge to the moral permissibility of procreation.