In an article called Could There Ever Be a Duty to Have Children? Author Anca Gheaus argues that there is such a case, and ironically, it is the hypothetical scenario in which people voluntarily stop procreating. In such a hypothetical scenario Gheaus argues: “it could be legitimate for states to incentivize and maybe even coerce individuals to bear and rear children […] in order to avoid great harm to a potential last generation of childless people”.

Gheaus’ argument is not (at least not directly) an anti antinatalist argument. She doesn’t make the familiar argument of opposing antinatalism, supposedly on behalf of a last generation, an argument which I have addressed in former texts so I will not address it here.
Gheaus states that her argument “start from the background common-sensical view that having children is morally permissible: under normal conditions (including normal demographic and environmental conditions)”. (p. 1)
And she also conditions her argument on two assumptions: “First, that the prospective children will have adequate lives which are not worse, on average, than those of their parents’ generation. Second, that procreation is not, in general, morally wrong.” (p. 1)

So Gheaus’ argument may not be a direct counterargument to antinatalism using the harm to the last generation, but it is a defense and even a coercion of procreation due to the harm to the last generation, and therefore I wish to make a short comment on her claim.

Despite it not being a direct anti antinatalist argument and despite her conditions, it is hard to ignore her ignorance about the harm bound with creating new people – that is the harm to the created people, and to the numerous sentient creatures who would be harmed by the created people all along their lives so to provide them with what they need and mostly with what they want.

Conditioning the argument on that the prospective children will have adequate lives which are not worse, on average, than those of their parents’ generation, doesn’t guarantee that many people would not be miserable. Practically speaking, ‘on average’ means that at least some people of each generation are expected to be miserable. So even if we consider only the harm to the created people, especially considering that procreation is expected to prolong for many generations until the last one comes, it is highly probable that their misery alone would be greater than the misery of a last generation. And when adding all the harm that all the created people, until the last generation comes, would cause to others, there is absolutely no doubt that the harm would be much greater than the harm to the last generation. Clearly much more harm would be caused if procreation continues, let alone if it would be forced on people, than the harm caused to the last generation.

What makes things even worse is that a last generation is bound to someday come. Whichever and whenever, the harm to the last generation is inevitable. If it would happen anyway, why add so much harm until it inevitably comes? Anyone who is created until the last generation comes won’t prevent the harm of the last generation but would only add to the general harm.

There is no need in this case for the radical argument that any case of procreation is an ethical crime towards the created person, since even a much softer antinatalist formulation, such as that allowing procreation is an ethical crime because undoubtedly at least some people would be miserable, is sufficient to rebuttal her argument. And that is since it is very hard to presume that the harm to the last generation would be greater even than the harm of all the miserable people who would be created up to the last generation, supposedly for its sake.

But perhaps more importantly and surely more certainly, no matter what kind of lives the created people themselves would have, due to the immense harm caused to others by all the created people until the last generation comes, there is no chance that the harm to the last generation would be worse than the harm to all the creatures until then. So if anything, there should be a duty not to procreate, and not under specific hypothetical conditions but right here right now in our everyday reality.

Gheaus’ argument is in a way, taking the argument of the harm to the last generation to the next level, because although she raises two conditions she also raises the bar by arguing that in the case of a generation who doesn’t want to procreate, it is ethically justified to force it to.
She writes in the introduction:

“This chapter argues that there is a collective responsibility to have enough children in order to ensure that people will not, in the future, suffer great harm due to depopulation. Moreover, if people stopped having children voluntarily, it could be legitimate for states to incentivize and maybe even coerce individuals to bear and rear children.”

I agree that there should be a collective responsibility to ensure that people in the last generation will not suffer great harm and I have referred to this issue in other texts, I just don’t understand why this collective responsibility should not only skip all the generations until the last one, but sacrifice so many individuals from so many generations, for the sake of the last one. Where is the collective responsibility to ensure that people, and any other sentient creature, from any other generation, will not suffer great harm? Where is the collective responsibility for all the misery that would be caused until the last generation?

Forcing people to procreate against their will is to punish them so to supposedly avoid punishing other people, those of the last generation, and all the more so despite that their harm is inventible.
This suggestion is to perpetuate vulnerability and harm instead of seizing the moment and solving it for good.

Besides, if there ever is a generation that doesn’t want to procreate, it would also be the last generation, so it would be the very same generation that would be the “victim” of its own decision not to create a new generation to take care of it. Why force a generation to procreate against their will supposedly for their own sake? If that is the decision that a generation has made it is probably the case that that generation preferred not to procreate over being provided with care when they get old. The chances for a generation like that to ever come along are close to nothing anyway, so of all generations, to punish this one?! If someday such a noble and responsible generation would appear, why ruin it with a duty to procreate?

People deciding not to procreate is not a problem, it is a solution.
But apparently, while we are vainly trying to convince humanity to stop procreating, some thinkers argue that even if our improbable wishes would ever come true, these people must be forced to procreate anyway. What is a dream to us, to some people is a nightmare.
But obviously that is not the biggest problem about a generation that decides not to procreate, the biggest problem about it is that it would never ever come voluntarily. For such a generation to ever truly come, we need to make it.


References

Gheaus Anca Could There Ever Be a Duty to Have Children? (2015)
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199378111.003.0004