PHIL 251 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Pessimism, The Famine
26 Apr 2016
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Abstract of the essay: in what follows, rachels will argue that it is immoral to have a child, by which he means it is immoral to conceive and rear a child. Rachels suggests that the biggest decision one will make in life is not marriage but parenthood. First, each additional person profoundly affects the world. Second, being a parent entails drastically changing one"s lifestyle for at least 18 years. Third, parenthood has no morally viable escape hatch. Although creating a new human being will have profound effects on the world, most of those effects are unpredictable. Parenthood might seem like the default option in life. In the real world, many parents didn"t choose to become parents, exactly: they chose to have sex; the woman accidentally became pregnant; and then the woman chose not to abort. Sometimes, one member of a couple (or both) wants to have a child really badly.
