Children

What is the basis of a person's right to have children?

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But does a person have a right to have children? I surely don't have a right that someone else should be sufficiently inclined to procreate with me so that I end up with children produced the old fashioned way (I don't have a right that you or anyone else should find me sexually attractive enough, even when you've had a few drinks: no one owes that to me). Nor, surely, do I have a right that someone or or some agency should provide me with the means to have a child in some new-fangled artificial way.

It might be permissible for me to have childen, other things being equal. And perhaps I normally have a right not to be prevented from having children (just as I have a right not to be prevented from doing lots of other permissible things). And perhaps further, we even have some sort of right that social arrangements are not such as to make it very difficult for us to try to fulfil that basic human desire (at least in moderation – though what if disaster would ensue if everyone who wants to have children breeds? -- maybe we'd then have to introduce a lottery system for the chance to have children). But that suggests at most a right to be allowed to get on with it and to try to have children with someone who is willing. Which isn't a right to have children.

I agree with Peter, that the right to have children -- or, as I prefer to frame it, the right to procreate -- is not a positive claim right. No one has the correlative duty to supply you with children, or even (I'd argue) with the means to have children. But it's a fascinating question. My own thinking is that there is a tendency to think of the right to procreate as a right of property or acquisition, when in fact it is a right of expression. Procreation is an activity (and as Peter points out, it is an activity that does not guarantee a product), and it is this activity the chance for which is ordinarily considered to be so fundamental to living a good human life that it is protected by a right.

I think it is also interesting to consider arguments suggesting that procreation should not be viewed as a fundamental human good that individuals should be able to enjoy when they choose to become parents and find themselves in a position to live up to the responsibilities of parenthood.

Consider the thought that our uncreated potential descendants deserve our moral consideration. The act of being brought into existence surely is one of great ethical significance, and yet it is an ethically significant act that we "force" upon our children. Could this act of coercion itself be immoral? If so, procreation might be immoral.

Or consider this ecological argument: Might the many potential generations of future humans have a moral claim on us not to despoil the earth to such an extent that their lives are severely compromised? Suppose, further, that there exists a maximum population size that beyond which it becomes ecologically and technologically impossible for humans to meet that obligation. If our current population is close to or above that limit, it may be ethically required for many of the humans currently alive not to procreate until attrition causes the human population to decline to a "sustainable" level.

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