Many environmental philosophers have argued that there is an obligation for individuals to reduce their individual carbon footprints. However, few of them have addressed whether this obligation would entail a corresponding duty to limit one’s family size. In this paper, I examine several reasons that one might view procreative acts as an exception to a more general duty to reduce one’s individual greenhouse gas emissions. I conclude that none of these reasons are convincing. Thus, if there is an obligation to (...) reduce one’s unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, then people should also limit the size of their families when they have the means to do so. (shrink)

Kenneth Einar Himma (2009, 2016) argues that the existence of Hell renders procreation impermissible. Jason Marsh (2015) contends that problems of evil motivate anti-natalism. Anti-natalism is principally rejected for its perceived conflict with reproductive rights. I propose a theistic solution to the latter problem. Universalism says that all persons will, postmortem, eventually be eternally housed in Heaven, a superbly good place wherein harm is fully absent. The acceptance of universalism is now widespread, but I offer further reason to embrace one (...) variant of it. If universalism is true and there are opportunities to procreate in Heaven, then reproductive autonomy is largely preserved for everyone. Assuming Heaven is a harm-free place, there are no risks to children born in Heaven, unlike Earth or Hell. While this requires human persons to accept temporary restrictions on procreation during our premortem lives, the bulk of reproductive autonomy is preserved since one will have infinite opportunities to reproduce in Heaven. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a refined version of Seana Shiffrin’s consent argument for anti-natalism and argue that longtermism is best justified not through the traditional consequentialist approach, but from an anti-natalist perspective. I first reformulate Shiffrin’s consent argument, which claims that having children is pro tanto morally problematic because the unconsented harm the child will suffer could not be justified by the benefits they will enjoy, by including what I call the trivializing requirement to better accommodate various criticisms. Based (...) on this iteration of anti-natalism, I argue that future generations should not be seen as far away strangers who are merely anonymous bearers of well-being, but rather as collective victims of the wrongful acts of procreation. As a result, anti-natalism provides us with a rational ground to put a key moral priority on improving the future, not only as restitution to future generations for the unconsented harm imposed on them, but also as part of a long-term effort to nullify the anti-natalist criticism, since the consent argument would no longer apply if our society eventually becomes so utopian that the positive aspects of the average person’s life vastly outweigh its negative aspects. (shrink)

Facing a recent surge in anti-natalist arguments saying that human procreation is immoral, some defend human procreation by saying that procreative parenting adds meaning to parents’ life. This article examines one such defence, and argues that it does not suffice to rescue human procreation from the challenges to procreation.