Care Does Not Create a Duty to Procreate

This article asks whether a duty to care for others can generate a pro tanto duty to procreate. It takes Schmidt’s care-based pronatalist argument as its starting point and argues that duties toward existing persons do not, on their own, require the creation of new people who may later provide care. Procreation is different from ordinary forms of assistance because it creates a new person whose interests must also be considered and places substantial bodily and long-term burdens on potential parents. From an antinatalist and feminist perspective, demographic need, social usefulness, and the needs of a possible last generation are not sufficient to ground a reproductive duty. The article does not claim that all procreation is impermissible or that extinction is desirable. It argues instead that the prospect of extinction does not itself create a duty to procreate. Care and reproductive freedom should remain central even under conditions of severe demographic decline.