From Abstinence to Assistance: Antinatalism's Unexpected Endorsement of the Principle of Procreative Beneficence

2025/06/11 by Marcus T. L. Teo · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Medicine · #Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations #Ethics and Legal Issues in Pediatric Healthcare #Reproductive Health and Technologies

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/bioe.13432

openalex publication_date 2025/06/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/08

Abstract

This essay begins from the point that developments in antinatalism, or the view that it is wrong to bear children, place legitimate pressures on prospective parents to seriously consider the harms of bringing their prospective children into existence. This essay does not defend antinatalism but instead considers an upshot of bioethical import if one takes these antinatalist pressures seriously. Attending to the debate on the normative legitimacy of Savulescu's Principle of Procreative Beneficence (PPB), I argue that antinatalist pressures give rise to reasons that count in favor of the PPB. I show how an antinatalist-corollary version of the PPB might be derived and how we might respond to the PPB's main criticisms and conceptual difficulties.

Citations

• Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children
• Better Never to Have Been

Discussions

• ✨Publication Alert!✨ After a brief publication dry spell, my third is finally out in Bioethics! This piece is the first to be published in a series of projects that studies downstream normative upsh [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]

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