The Birth of St. John the Baptist.
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הנה נחלת יהוה בנים כר פרי הבטן׃
Some philosophers have claimed that those who want children have a prima facie duty to adopt rather than procreate. The basic argument is quite simple: there are millions of children in the world who are in need of loving homes, and who would benefit massively from adoption. What is more, procreation has various potential downsides, such as the large environmental costs of creating a new human being. Hence, those who wish to experience the goods of parenthood have a prima facie duty to do so via adoption rather than procreation. One’s own interests can defeat this prima facie duty only “when they rise to the level of a project: when they have non-trivial, non-negative value and concern interests that have central significance in our lives” (Rulli 2014, 3).
What sorts of interests would count as projects, sufficient to make procreation permissible? Tina Rulli considers a number of different potential interests (such as the desire for parent-child physical resemblance), and concludes that only one—the desire to experience pregnancy—is (possibly) sufficient to allow procreation, with all other interests “[failing] to defeat a duty to adopt a child rather than create one” (ibid., 1). What is more, even the desire for pregnancy will amount to only “a onetime exception” (ibid., 29), since after a woman has already been pregnant, her interest in experiencing pregnancy a second (or third or fourth) time will not be sufficient to outweigh the duty to adopt. Rulli thus concludes that procreation is generally impermissible, and at most can only be done once.
Interestingly, natural law theory offers us an easy way to escape Rulli’s conclusion: on this view, an openness to procreation is essential for the validity of marriage and the moral permissibility of sex. Now, having a valid marriage—including sexual relations with one’s spouse—clearly qualifies as a central life project, and would hence suffice to outweigh the prima facie duty to adopt. What is more, unlike Rulli’s pregnancy exemption, this view would allow for repeated procreation, as a married couple’s interest in permissible sexual relations does not cease after the birth of their first child. Hence, natural law theory allows us to affirm the permissibility of repeated procreation on the part of married couples. Given that most people have a strong intuition that such procreation is permissible—and given the difficulty of avoiding Rulli’s conclusion assuming standard contemporary views in sexual and environmental ethics—it appears that we have good reason to adopt natural law theory.
I don't think Ruli conclusion is that problematic. Cause we could take it to other directions as well. For example - we could argue that people who have more money than they need should use all their spare money to help other people.
Does it mean all this people are immoral?
I don't think so. Cause in the end we are not ought to be the hero of anyone just cause we are having a good life and they don't