Bear No Children - Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change - page 155

life. Typically, then, we end up puting one version of individual rights
against another. Yet the terms of that debate mask a more honest discus-
sion about whether the principle of equality between men and women
should override the woman's traditional role as the bearer of children—
whether the principles of modern individualism, now finally applied to
women, are more important than the ancient endorsement of reproduc-
tion. In this debate as it is currently conducted, the modern notion of
individual liberty confronts traditional norms, as it has so often over the
past three centuries.
But in our time, that debate is hopelessly outdated. Given the
immense pressure of climate change on us all, the abstract liberty of the
individual—male or female, born or unborn—cannot take precedence
over the basic question as to whether humanity as a whole has any further
right to use the Earth for its own purposes. The answer to that question is
simple: we do not. But if we as a species have no such right, neither do we
as individuals. In that case, the liberty we take for granted—to reproduce
or not, more or less as we please—no longer applies. It follows as well
that elevating the life of the unborn child over all other considerations is
uterly blind to its consequences for the life of the species, as well as the
life of the biosphere as a whole. For sexually active people, a “pro-life”
position is actually “pro-death,” for it favors human reproduction at the
expense of all other forms of life, and, in the end, at the expense of human
life as well. Neither the “pro-choice” nor the “pro-life” viewpoint can be
very persuasive today.
The same blind spot appears as well in discussions about the falling
birth rate in the developed world. Demographers, policymakers, and
journalists often ponder what it means that women in the industrialized
nations seldom bear children at a rate that would replace the current pop-
ulation. That fact leads to questions about how to support increasingly
elderly populations on the labor of a diminishing workforce, for example,
or how to provide new incentives for women to reproduce. But few par-
ticipants in this discussion mention that a lower birth rate is a good thing
ecologically speaking, that it may be a sign that some people are awake to
the challenges facing us and are acting responsibly. 136
This blind spot in our thinking shows up even in contexts that sup-
posedly encourage environmental responsibility. Websites that help you