In over 30 years of practice, Dr. Errol Billinkoff rarely saw a man without kids come into his Winnipeg clinic to get a vasectomy. But since the pandemic began, he says it's become an almost daily occurrence.
And he's not alone.
"At first, I thought I was the only one who was noticing this," Billinkoff, who brought a no-scalpel vasectomy procedure to Winnipeg in the early 1990s, told CBC News in a November interview.
"But I am part of an international chat group where doctors who do vasectomies participate and the topic came up, and it's like everybody notices it."
Being born is fine, once you're here you should try to live life to its fullest. But I don't want kids, I would be a horrid father.
I’ve never understood that argument. Simple logic states nobody would exist if we asked every sperm and egg before having sex.
Correct, you can't ask. It's a question of ethics.
It's something to just ask. No one was asked to be born. Some where cheated out of a good life. There's people born into poverty and disease who don't know a good life. They feel that pain and suffering without the option to go out that isn't killing themselves.
You weren't asked, I wasn't, our parents weren't, and so on. It's not evil, it's just the pure simple fact of "No one was asked to be born into a world where you need to earn money or you will die."
I still don’t understand.
I’m good with making life less shitty for everyone though.
This is one of those philosophical questions that have no "correct" answer but heres my take on it. Also sorry, this turned into an essay but I was on a roll
The main thing is that having a child isn't something the parents do for the child. You can't do anything for a child that doesn't exist. Having a child is something parents do for themselves; they want a child so they have a child. Plus an unborn child can't possibly consent to being born. Put those two things together and you have two people doing something that they want to do for their own benefit which fundamentally changes the state of being of another person who can't possibly consent to it.
When you have a child you are also taking a gamble on how their life will turn out without consulting them. They could wind up being the happiest person in the world who lives a full perfectly fulfilled life. Or they could wind up absolutely miserable for the rest of their life wishing that they have never been born. Both of those things are largely up to random chance.
For example my brother in law was born to a homeless single heroin addict and grew up on the street even after his mom died. He is now a professional engineer with a doting wife, a loving family, and a large house with a white picket fence in a fairly nice neighborhood. He now literally lives the steriotypical american dream except he has a cat instead of a dog. Sure he worked for all of that but even he will tell you that it also just required a lot of luck. Meanwhile my foster brother was born to a happy, healthy, loving, and even relatively wealthy family but due to a freak illness when he was barely a toddler he now has next to no motor function. He can only slightly move one eye and eyelid but even that is taxing for him. He can kind of control a tablet with eye tracking for brief periods of time before it exhausts him and he likes to wink at people to say "hi" but that is the extent of agency he has in the world. He will almost certainly be like that for the rest of his life.
When you have a child you are taking that chance without consulting them. Some people see the chance of their child living a good life as being worth the risk, which is a perfectly acceptable opinion to have. Don't take this as me saying people need to be ashamed of having children. Like I said, there is no correct answer here. Other people (myself included) see it as unethical to take that risk for someone who can't consent to it. I obviously lean that way due to personal experience. I also don't see much point in creating more children when there is even one child that doesn't have a happy home. My genes aren't anything special, why make a new child when I could even possibly help an existing child have a better life.
Let's not forget about child care, cause you know, in this economy both parents typically need to work to keep their heads financially above water.
How do you signal a desire to be born, practically speaking? Who do you contact to indicate your desire to begin existing?
If you don't want to exist, why not simply surrender your place in line to someone who does?
Underpants, you're pretty smart and I almost always agree with you, but there's no option for refusing to be born. There's only one option to stop living willingly, and it's called suicide.
There's no option for volunteering to be born, either. The argument can just as easily be turn on its head.
The idea is anti-natalism is one you develop as a mature rational adult, not one you held prior to your birth.
Think of it as being in a roller coaster. Two minutes into the ride you decide "Too scary, I don't want to be here" but also acknowledge how it is impractical to get out of your seat in the middle of a loop de loop. So you turn to your friend in the other seat and say "Past me didn't get consent from future me to be here! That's unfair!"
You're asking for something nobody can provide you, even if they wanted to indulge your demands.
I would argue that the hardest working sperm fertilizes the egg, so technically it IS the one who wanted it the most.
It's not some big gotcha: it's unethical because consent is impossible to achieve. You have to have been alive for quite a number of years before you even have the cognition and experience to form an opinion about existing.
But that doesn't just mean creating new beings is good because it's impossible to consent. How would that apply to anything else?? By some logic (if you ignore obvious pain signals) animals can't "tell" us they don't consent to being butchered and eaten but that doesn't make eating meat ethical either (I'm not vegan btw.) Having sex with an unconscious person is rape, because they can't consent.
There may be suicidal animals who want to be eaten and there are certainly people who enjoy non-consensual sex and people who like being alive and believe their existence is a gift. The outcome still doesn't excuse the act in these cases.
That doesn't logically follow. Ethics isn't predicated on a universal consensus.
There are a host of arguments for and against childbirth in the modern era. Much as there are a host of arguments for and against industrial mining or nuclear power or second hand smoking. But "the non-existent entity can't signal consent" isn't a material consideration, its a theological one. You're assuming an entity capable of consent that isn't available to converse with.
It's also totally unprovable. How do you show pre-born people didn't consent. If we're going into the idea of unborn souls being dragged out of the ether into mortal bodies, what means to have to prove they weren't volunteering to be here?
How do you take a breath without asking permission from everyone around you by infringing on their supply oxygen? How do you take a shit without first verifying everyone in your neighborhood approves of the turd you're adding to their groundwater?
So much of this really does boil down to "My only ethical move is to kill myself". Like, you're deliberately backing yourself into this corner, and then complaining that someone else hasn't relieved you of the burden of pulling the trigger. It isn't ethical, its infantile. You are, in effect, bemoaning the fact that every aspect of existence isn't shaped to your personal beliefs.
you don't, which is why reproducing is inherently unethical.
Legally speaking, and ethically too, I suppose, parents typically consent for their underage children. They make decisions based on what the parent thinks is in the best interest of their offspring. For some children, their best interest is to never exist. Forced birth is taking medical decisions away from the mother for both the mother and the potential child.
Ah yes, the classic "just kill yourself" argument. You totally destroyed that antinatalist.
Antinatalists aren't suicidal, most likely living, they just understand that life isn't a gift.
The "I didn't ask to be born" argument implies a mechanism by which you could ask to be born.
Go down to your local NICU and survey it's residents. Tell me how many you meet who hold this view in the hours and days after their birth.
Hell, give me a survey of two year olds. Four year olds. Eight year olds, even.
I challenge you to find me any fervent anti-natalist younger than a teenager. I'll challenge you to find any that aren't terminally online.
Anti-natalism isn't a philosophy you're born into, it's something you develop over time through rational observation and logical reason. These are two skills you develop after being alive for some time, typically through dialogue with other living people.
They are not conclusions you can instinctively reach in uterus.
"I challenge you to find anything [you belief in] that isn't someone I can disregard and not think about."
Right, neither is socialism, liberalism, capitalism, nihilism, natalism, or any belief system. You only do what your parents told you to do until you start to have your own thoughts and feelings .
It's not a literal "Ask the fetus if it wants to live", it's more a "The fact we can't have informed proper consent is odd." It's not a "Haha, gotcha! You should kill yourself!"
It's more the question of "Since we can't ask, is it ethically correct?" And just doing what nature wants us to do is not always the best.
Not even going in the "muh overpopulation, kill all da browns!!" reactionary way, humans are evolutionary made to be hunter-gatherers, not make books, computers, medicine, money, or anything else we do as the species in 2024 and onwards. Apes don't know how to make an atomic bomb, humans do. Birds don't know how to construct the most deeply beautiful sonnets that make every listener weep in awe every time, humans do.
Humans are more than what we were evolved to do. We question everything, including ourselves. Sometimes the fact a question can't be answered, let alone even properly asked, is a quandary.
This is not a personal "Underpants, you need to prohibit yourself from having a kid", I can't control that for anyone but myself. I'm never going to tell a parent or someone wanting to be one that they are a selfish monster, despite what one of my parents was.
You weren't asked to be born, but you must continue it once you are. The only other choice is willful harm to yourself. If I went to a maternity ward and started smashing in skulls, I'm not an anti-natalist, I'm a murderer. It's the same reason why abortion isn't murder.
So why would you assert an unborn person holds these beliefs?
Why would you consider communicating with a non-existent entity the basis for making ethical decisions?