Human procreation is normatively unique. It entails bringing into existence new persons who have the same moral standing as every other human being, and to whom a wide range of duties are owed by the State, their parents, and many others. In creating a child, the parent unilaterally creates new rights and obligations for other persons, as well as a lifetime of human needs and aspirations to be met from non-infinite collective resources. Nothing about the “natural” mechanism by which these normative changes and practical costs are imposed makes them automatically fair, or compossible with the pre-existing rights, needs, and obligations of others.
Nonetheless, it is standardly assumed that individuals have a virtually absolute right to create biological children, and that anti-natalist interventions are for this reason generally impermissible. Works of human or civil rights activism, including publications by the United Nations, tend to briefly touch on the possibility of procreative harm due to human overpopulation, generally framed as a distant, unlikely, or misattributed threat. Procreative harm in the more immediate context of the family is typically ignored altogether.
In this dissertation I provide a novel conceptualisation and philosophical account of a morally justified right to procreate. I employ a modified, empirically informed interests-based theory that grounds rights in components of human wellbeing as well as uncontroversial requirements of justice, and takes account of the complex moral conflicts and harms that may arise from procreation. The resulting right is much narrower and more caveated than is commonly assumed. I conclude that, far from ruling out anti-natalist interventions, respect for fundamental rights requires the implementation of appropriate anti-natalist policies to address moral conflicts involving the right to procreate and to preserve the longer-term viability of these basic protections
