An innocent bystander (?) stumbles into the antinatal abyss
– Matti Häyry
Monsieur Jourdain: Oh, really? So when I say: “Nicole bring me my slippers and fetch my nightcap,” is that prose?
Philosophy Master: Most clearly.
Monsieur Jourdain: Well, what do you know about that! These forty years now I’ve been speaking in prose without knowing it!
Molière, The Bourgeois Gentleman 1670
I received an invitation to be interviewed in an antinatalist podcast. Being unable to say no, I accepted, although I had no idea what gave me the honor. In the ensuing correspondence, it transpired that someone had identified me as the author of one of the three “philanthropic” defenses of antinatalism – what they call the “risk argument”. Oh, well. What do you know?
The presenter and I took our sweet time acclimatizing ourselves to each other and to the situation, and it turned out to be quite a journey! I learned so many things about antinatalism – and, in the process, about myself and what I have written, said, and thought during my five decades in philosophy, ethics, and bioethics.
I began my preparations by defining the key isms as neutrally as I could. Pronatalism holds that we have a right, and possibly a duty, to have children. Antinatalism holds that we have a right, and possibly a duty, not to have children. These overlap in the “right” domain under the principle of reproductive autonomy – the license to choose when and whether to procreate.
Looking back at my academic historythrough the lens of these definitions, I realized that I took my first step on the road to antinatalism in my 1984 master’s thesis. I concluded my philosophical analysis by stating that abortions should be legally permitted at request. Women have, as required by the mild form of antinatalism, a right not to have children.
Fast-forward ten years, and in a 1994 bookI presented (p. 121) a full account of negative utilitarianism, a doctrine stating that our first duty is to minimize suffering. Assuming, like I did, that there is no need to come into existence and that existence can be painful, we have an obligation not to have children. I had arrived to strict antinatalism.
Unfortunately, I lost the thread there. Negative utilitarianism seems to demand the end of humanity – no sufferers, no suffering – and the philosophical consensus was that this is not acceptable. I yielded and focused on intense suffering as a reason to abstain. I found one example in the misery of children born infected with HIV, a cruel fate in the 1990s.
After a couple of more twists, I devised in a 2004 article the risk argument that made me an antinatalist when the term was launched two years later. It took me another ten years to became aware of the word. And only now, preparing for the interview, have I, like Monsieur Jourdain, learned that these forty years I have been speaking in antinatal without knowing it!
Learn all about my journey – its past, its present, and its future – in this interview! https://youtu.be/4L1eiDoMuCQ
