The Consent Argument

One of the most popular antinatalist arguments is that procreation is wrong since it is impossible to obtain the consent of the created person.
In addressing this argument I have decided to focus on Seana Shiffrin’s article Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm. That is despite that Shiffrin doesn’t even aim at making an antinatalist argument, but argues for a more equivocal stance toward procreation. Shiffrin is mostly concerned with the ease with which society refuses to impose liability on parents despite that they “subject their future children to harm and substantial risk by bringing them into existence” (p. 148). However, I think that in her course of challenging some of the false philosophical premises against ‘wrongful life’ liability, and the current juridical policy toward issues involving procreation and parent–child relations, she makes a very substantial antinatalist case.

Harms and Benefits

Like Benatar, Shiffrin also argues that there is an asymmetry between benefits and harms (which she thinks are not two ends of a scale, and are often absolutely independent states of a positive and a negative kind), but as opposed to Benatar’s version, hers doesn’t stem from advantageousness of non-existence over existence, but from consent.

Shiffrin’s argument relies on the ethical premise regarding benefits and harms with no consent – while it is morally permissible to inflict harm without consent to prevent a greater harm, it is impermissible to inflict harm without consent in order to bestow a benefit.
She exemplifies:

“Absent evidence that the person’s will is to the contrary, it is permissible, perhaps obligatory, to inflict the lesser harm of a broken arm in order to save a person from significant greater harm, such as drowning or brain damage from oxygen deprivation. But, it seems wrong to perform a procedure on an unconscious patient that will cause her harm but also redound to her greater, pure benefit. At the very least, it is much harder to justify. For example, it seems wrong to break an unconscious patient’s arm even if necessary to endow her with valuable, physical benefits, such as supernormal memory, a useful store of encyclopedic knowledge, twenty IQ points worth of extra intellectual ability, or the ability to consume immoderate amounts of alcohol or fat without side effects. At the least, it would be much harder to justify than inflicting similar harm to avert a greater harm, such as death or significant disability.” (p.127)

Therefore, despite that as opposed to Benatar Shiffrin thinks that being created can overall benefit a person, she argues that procreation is morally problematic since all existing persons suffer harms, and it is impossible to secure their consent before being created.
Even if the pleasures of life can be seen as advantages over non-existence, it is morally wrong to impose preventable harms on others without their consent. Harming others without their consent is permissible only to prevent greater harm. Since this is never the case when it comes to procreation, creating someone is an unmistakable violation of this ethical principle.

Shiffrin argues that even though people can benefit their offspring by creating them, they also impose serious harms upon them:

“By being caused to exist as persons, children are forced to assume moral agency, to face various demanding and sometimes wrenching moral questions, and to discharge taxing moral duties. They must endure the fairly substantial amount of pain, suffering, difficulty, significant disappointment, distress, and significant loss that occur within the typical life. They must face and undergo the fear and harm of death. Finally, they must bear the results of imposed risks that their lives may go terribly wrong in a variety of ways. All of these burdens are imposed without the future child’s consent. This, it seems, is in tension with the foundational liberal, anti-paternalist principle that forbids the imposition of significant burdens and risks upon a person without the person’s consent. Doing so violates this principle even if the imposition delivers an overall benefit to the affected person. Hence, procreation is a morally hazardous activity because in all cases it imposes significant risks and burdens upon the children who result. The imposition of significant burdens and risks is not a feature of exceptional or aberrant procreation, but of all procreation.” (p.137)

Common Objections to the Consent Argument

Some object the consent argument, claiming that consent can be hypothetically assumed. Shiffrin opposes this claim for four reasons:
(1) Great harm is not at stake if one is not being created
(2) If one is being created, the harms suffered may be very severe
(3) The imposed harms of life cannot be escaped without high costs
(4) The hypothetical consent procedure is not based on features of the individual who will bear the imposed condition but on a false attempt to universalize preferences of benefits

Others are objecting the idea that it is the parents who are imposing the serious harms.
Shiffrin replies:

“one might resist the claim that because existence may deliver harms, the creator who causes a person to exist causes her harm. One might object that placing someone in a condition where she will necessarily suffer harm is not the same as causing her harm. In some sense, the condition inflicts the harm, not the agent. But this observation seems tangential to assessments of responsibility. If an agent places a patient in the path of an evident, oncoming avalanche that will break her arm, it seems fair to say that the agent harms the patient; at the least (and sufficient for my purposes), the agent is accountable and responsible for the harm the patient suffers—even if the agent does not break the arm directly through his action, does not seek the harm and even tries to prevent it (as may happen in cases of deliberate action resulting in foreseen, but unintentional harm).” (p.125)

Another attempt to counter the consent argument is by claiming that it is impossible to receive consent from non-existing persons.
First of all, the impossibility to obtain consent to inflict harms isn’t a justification to impose them anyway, especially when there is no harm involved in not creating someone. In fact, procreation is exactly the case in which there shouldn’t be a doubt that we mustn’t act in ways that might harmfully affect someone without consent, since not procreating is the surest way not to harm someone without consent.

Secondly, it’s plausible to argue that an existing person acts wrongly towards someone who couldn’t give consent, if as a result of that action, there would be a person who is harmed with no consent. Shiffrin claims on that matter that: “If our actions now set into motion causal chains that will result in a right’s being violated in the future, this action is, at best, morally problematic.” (p.138)

More in this context, some try to refute the consent argument by attempting to turn it on its head, claiming that following the logic of antinatalists, if we need to obtain a person’s consent to be created we must also obtain a person’s consent not to be created. In other words, if consent is important, how come antinatalists are asking for one only in cases of creating a person but not in cases of not creating a person?
However, there is a fundamental difference between the case where there is no existing person yet but there is going to be, and the case where there will never be an existing person. In both cases it is impossible to obtain consent before making a decision, but in the case of procreation the consent of the person who will be affected by that decision is required, while in the case of not creating a person there is no person who will be affected by that decision. There is no and never will be a person who needs to consent to harms that would never be caused to that person.

There is no need to ask someone to consent to not being created, because there is no such someone and because there are no harms that need to be consented to.
When people decide to create a person, that person’s consent is needed because once created that person would necessarily and inevitably be harmed. But that is not the case when people decide not to create a person, because then there is no person at all, let alone one who would necessarily and inevitably be harmed. Creating a person is necessarily forcing something on someone. Not creating a person is necessarily not forcing anything on anyone.

The fact that someone didn’t exist before being created doesn’t change the fact that once created that someone exists without giving consent to its own existence. Consent is relevant because someone will exist and will be harmed during existence. Had that someone not been created, there would have been no existing person who is affected by not being created and therefore there would be no need to obtain consent.

This claim implies that if creating a person is to force existence on people, then not creating people is to force nonexistence on people. But it is impossible to force nonexistence because nonexistence is not a state anyone can be in. Only existence can be forced. And in fact, existence can only be forced since existing people never give consent to be created.
There are no persons whose nonexistence was forced on them for the simple reason that there is no such thing as persons who were never created and there is no such thing as nonexistence. However, existence does exist, and it was forced on everyone who was ever created, exactly because consent could never be obtained. Nonexistence can never be forced on anyone, and existence can only be forced, and it is forced on everyone.

And finally, pro-natalists object the consent argument by claiming that most people state that their life is worth living, and by that they are expressing their consent retroactively.
But for people to be able to give a retroactive consent for their creation, they must also be able to retroactively decline it, and they can’t. No one can undo its own existence. People can end their existence, but they can’t retroactively cancel it. As I broadly explained in the text about suicide, this option is extremely problematic in itself, and is irrelevant to the case of consent since killing oneself doesn’t retroactively cancel a person’s existence, it doesn’t retroactively offset all the suffering that that person experienced, and it would probably cause additional suffering to anyone who cares about that person. If created people can’t really retroactively reject their creation, then they also can’t retroactively give their consent. Creation was forced on all people, and once they exist none really has a choice in terms of consent, even the ones who state that they are happy that they were created.

The impossibility to obtain a unanimous consent, beforehand, from everyone who would ever live, and from everyone who would ever be harmed by everyone who would ever live, is sufficient to construct a valid antinatalist argument in my view. But even under much less radical criterions, even if you disagree that it is wrong to cause someone harm without that person’s consent, even if you disagree that pleasures are not really good as claimed in the post about Benatar’s asymmetry,  and even if you disagree that the reason most people feel that their lives are worth living is not because their lives are really good but mostly because of various psychological mechanisms, still, if consent is derived from the claim that life is worth living, then the ones who feel that their lives are not worth living, don’t give consent retroactively. And since no one can tell whether the lives of the persons they are creating would be found worth living by the persons created, what this claim actually implies is that the majority’s supposed retroactive consent should trample the minority who don’t retroactively give consent to their harms.

This claim is even more atrocious given that non-existing persons are not being harmed by not experiencing the good parts of life had they never existed, while existing persons are harmed by experiencing the bad things in lives. The fact that there are people who feel that their lives are not worth living, despite the allegedly good parts of life, is sufficient for all procreations to be morally unjustified. There are many people who feel that their lives are not worth living, but even if there were few, it doesn’t matter how many people feel this way, the proportions between the ones who feel that their lives are not worth living and the ones who feel they are worth living, are morally irrelevant since no one is harmed by not being created, and the ones who feel that their lives are not worth living are definitely harmed by being created. Had none of them existed, none of them would have been harmed.

Abstaining from procreation won’t cause any harm to anyone who wasn’t created. But a person who doesn’t consent to the miserable life forced upon it, is being severely harmed with no justification, no compensation, and the ‘way out’ option – suicide, although can stop future suffering, it can’t retroactively justify it, and has additional tremendous costs.

Every new person created is a new chance for a person who won’t retroactively give consent to be created, therefore every procreation is morally wrong.

The Harm to Others

In my view, the most important aspect of the consent argument, is one which I have yet to come across in this context – the harm to others.
Not only the person who is about to be created, is going to be harmed as a result of its existence, but also thousands of others who would be harmed as part of providing the living support for that person. A “support” none of them has ever given consent for. In this case I think it is safe to say that hypothetical consent won’t be given. No sentient creature would give consent to be harmed so a person who doesn’t even exist yet, would benefit.
Considering the harms to others, counterarguments such as hypothetical consent or that it is illogical to ascribe consent to non-existing persons, is irrelevant. Existing sentient creatures who will be harmed by a person who will be created, will most certainly not give their consent to be harmed by that person and for that person’s sake.

Before discussing the relevancy and feasibility of obtaining consent to be harmed from a person who doesn’t yet exist, we must obtain consent from everyone who would be harmed by that person’s existence. Even if we could have obtained consent from non-existing persons before creating them, we first must ask everyone who would be sacrificed and otherwise harmed by these persons. We must get their consent to be genetically modified so they would provide the maximum meat possible for the to-be born persons. We must get their consent to be imprisoned for their entire lives. We must get their consent to live without their family for their entire lives. We must get their consent to suffer chronic pain and maladies. We must get their consent to never breathe clean air, walk on grass, bath in water, and eat their natural food. We must get their consent to be violently murdered so the to-be born could consume their bodies. We must get their consent to destroy their habitats, pollute their land, water, and air.
But no one is asking them. And it is not even because everyone knows they would never give their consent, but because others’ harms matter so little to people, that no one even thinks they must be asked.

And one last point. Since this blog is actually a call for an operative antinatalist resolution, it is important to indicate that behind the consent argument there is a firm objection to the inherent coercion of procreation. This is an important note since some might oppose the forced sterilization call as an operative antinatalist resolution, due to its coercive aspect. But given that the only way to cease the inherent coercion of procreation is with the inherent coercion of forced sterilization, clearly for the long run that resolution holds much less coercion than letting procreation continue on its horrendous course. The number of individuals who would have to endure coercion of all kinds in the future if it won’t happen, is practically infinite. In fact, even without considering everyone who would ever exist, the number of individuals who endure coercion of all kinds in the present, already defeats the number of people who need to be sterilized.
Coercion is unavoidable, the question is of extent. It is either that people would continue to decide for other people that they would exist, generation after generation after generation, and for other creatures that they would have to be exploited, suffer and be sacrificed for the sake of the people they insist on creating, or that we decide for one generation only that they won’t procreate. There is no way around it, decisions are anyway being made for others, the question is will it be only the decision not to procreate and for one generation only, or the decision to feel pain, to fear, to be bored, to be disappointed, to be sad, to be lonely, to be purposeless, to die, to fear of dying and many other sources of suffering, and for generation after generation after generation after generation…
Refusing force sterilization on the current generation is forcing endless suffering on an endless number of individuals. The coercion involved in forced sterilization is for one generation only. The coercion involved in the refusal to forced sterilization can last until the sun burns out.

References

Benatar, David. Better Never to Have Been, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Shiffrin, Seana. Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm
Legal Theory 5, no. 2 (1999): 117–48

Singh, A. Assessing anti-natalism: A philosophical examination of the morality of procreation (University of Johannesburg 2011)