Pro-choice is in the middle of the spectrum. The opposite of pro-life is the belief that people should be required to have abortions
Pro-choice is in the middle of the spectrum. The opposite of pro-life is the belief that people should be required to have abortions
As do you, as does everyone else on the digital platforms on which the anti-natalist sentiment primarily resides.
And you can always revoke consent.
I want to be clear that I don’t recommend it. I think in the vast majority of cases, it is a permanent solution to temporary problems. I think the vast majority of people who consider it can live to change their minds.
I do think there are those who are so irreversibly disabled that their lives really are mostly suffering, and I support the right of those people to revoke their consent to life. But I think those cases are very rare.
Assuming the environment is reasonably stable, and there’s no serious history of irreversibly disabling conditions, I don’t think there’s a moral compunction to anti-natalism.
Buddy
My point is the anti natalists have the perspective that the risk of suffering is not worth imposing on a new human.
You saying that assessment is overblown does not change their perspective. It’s simple enough that with a bit of thought you can understand it, if you end up agreeing or not.
If you are using the phrase “I don’t understand” an a synonym of “I don’t agree with that stance” then I’m wasting my time.
The real part I didn’t understand is the “prior consent” part. Like I said, before you have the child, there’s nothing to ask for consent. It doesn’t make any sense.
But as to the rest, I’m saying that the assessment is so overblown that it ceases to be rational. A fraction of a fraction of a percent of people will never get fulfillment from life, so no one should ever have children?
There’s always some risk associated with everything. To never do anything because there’s a minuscule chance it could be disastrous is ridiculous.
Ok so you do understand it, but you are dismissing the concern. That’s fine.
For the prior consent part, consent requires active and willful assent to the act being effectuated. By the constraints of existence, children can not consent to be created. It’s an order of operations issue.
The act of consent is not asking. The act of consent is being told, yes you can do that to me.
I know what consent is. I’m saying that applying the concept of consent here is nonsensical. Consent is so logically impossible that it’s irrelevant. This is the part beyond understanding.
That’s why I bothered to go into any of the rest of the concern. The prior consent angle is meaningless, so the next place you go is retroactive consent.
And when you don’t get it retroactively?
I’m going to preface this by saying that while I understand the logic you are using by demanding consent before birth and don’t necessarily disagree with its credibility, it feels wrong to me, and that this is mostly me trying to justify that intuitive wrongness.
As I look for some precedent to compare your thinking to, the closest analogy I can find is someone in a coma. According to your logic, if a person is in a coma and it is uncertain whether they will ever wake up with no prior consent given one way or the other on what to do with them under such circumstances, then they should be kept alive because they have not given consent to pull the plug yet. Does that sound correct to you?
When such a scenario plays out in the real world I believe that right to consent is given to that person’s closest relative(s) to strike a balance between the practicality of making a decision and morality of that decision being made by those who know the person best, attaining an imperfect state of near-consent.
To apply the same thinking to birth, an unborn person-to-be has no ability to consent to their birth, so that consent must come from their parents, who may not know exactly who that person is but have the best idea of the circumstances and growing up conditions they would be born into which would affect their consent when they are able to give it. That, to me, seems like the best near-consent that can be attained.
In more basic terms, I think it should be morally necessary for potential parents to ask themselves “would I want to be born to us in our current and predicted circumstances?” Id both honestly answer yes then that near-consent has been achieved, and if either answers no or they never ask that question, it is not achieved and they should not have a child.
Does that seem rational enough to you?
Buddy, you said you don’t understand the position, so I told you what the position was and it’s easy to understand.
You don’t agree with it, and i don’t have an opinion either way other than it’s a valid perspective.
Not sure why you are trying to convince me. I won’t be convinced that someone’s opinion is wrong, or moral stance is wrong. It’s well reasoned enough and aims to reduce harm. They can have at it.
I’m not the guy you had been arguing with… I just read the thread and thought I’d chime in, as much to clarify my own thoughts for myself as convince anyone.
Then there’s another suicide in the world, I think they went over that earlier.
Yeah that’s devastating.