Anti-natalism is the philosophical value judgment that procreation is unethical or unjustifiable. Antinatalists thus argue that humans should abstain from making children. Some antinatalists consider coming into existence to always be a serious harm. Their views are not necessarily limited only to humans but may encompass all sentient creatures, arguing that coming into existence is a serious harm for sentient beings in general. There are various reasons why antinatalists believe human reproduction is problematic. The most common arguments for antinatalism include that life entails inevitable suffering, death is inevitable, and humans are born without their consent. Additionally, although some people may turn out to be happy, this is not guaranteed, so to procreate is to gamble with another person’s suffering. WIKIPEDIA
If you think, maybe for a few years, like 10-20 years, no one should make babies, and when things get better, we can continue, then you are not an anti-natalist. Anti-natalists believe that suffering will always be there and no one should be born EVER.
This photo was clicked by a friend, at Linnahall.
Theoretical weakness:
Anti-natalism is a deeply pessimistic take on the possibilities of the human experience. Where, once, people looked to push the boundaries of humanity’s knowledge and experience (e.g. psychedelic drugs, space exploration, art movements, radical politics), this movement sees the scale as so heavily tipped towards suffering that the bit of joy and wonder we experience is not even worth it. Its calculus looks to me to be similar to Effective Altruism, because it measures all the suffering to come for the unborn as a greater infinity than all the good they will experience. It simply offers a different conclusion: instead of putting those at the top of the hierarchies in our world in charge reducing/ending suffering (a solution I supply disagree with), AN instead just wants life to end because reducing suffering enough can’t be done.
To me, this leaves no room for the possibility of changing the human experience for the better. If we’re just trying to do some accounting as to whether it’s worth having kids on a societal scale, couldn’t we make it worth it? Instead of extinction, why not try radically different ways of organizing society to get rid of the hierarchies that create most of our suffering? One lesson i take from the history i’ve been around for is that the status quo only lasts for so long.
Finally, the idea of unborn people not having consented to birth is odd. They do not exist, so they have no desires, needs, or ability to consent. We can equally say they don’t “consent” to non-existence and are stuck there until they are born. When life first came into existence in the universe, was consent involved?
Practical weakness:
If this movement ever goes beyond a purely voluntary movement, to the point of enacting policy or attempting to prevent births in any way, it will become monstrous very quickly. Every such program will face resistance and, without an anti-carceral component to the movement, will have governments (or roving mobs) criminalizing birth, sterilizing people, and destroying the infrastructure of child care. At their most extreme, “anti-natalist” movements could advocate for the murder of every single person on earth, because that would be the surest way of preventing birth. All of these things would multiply the suffering of everyone, but would be “justifiable” in their eyes because it would “prevent the suffering” of innumerable people to be born in the future. Would global nuclear war achieve their goal?