The Right to Parent and Duties Concerning Future Generations

• DOI: 10.1111/jopp.12091
• Publication Date: 2016-03-03T06:51:39Z
• Authors: Anca Gheaus
• Keywords: Ethics; Filosofi; Infants -- Situació legal, lleis, etc.; Dret de família; right to parent; 05 social sciences; Etik; intergenerational justice; sustainability; Justícia; 0506 political science; Philosophy; children

WHY does the present generation have an environmental obligation concerning distant future generations? And does this obligation restrict the scope of legitimate procreation such as to avoid an overcrowded world? I address these questions by drawing on the claim that adults have a fundamental interest in rearing children that they can adequately parent, an interest which under normal conditions generates a right to parent. This right—as recently defended by several contemporary philosophers—could be interpreted either as a negative right, protecting potential adequate parents from interference with attempts to engage in parenting, or as a positive right, entitling potential adequate parents to active support such as assisted reproduction. Even if there is no entitlement to assisted reproduction, the right—I will argue—generates requirements on others that they preserve sufficient environmental resources to ensure adequate life prospects for the resulting children; therefore, it cannot be purely negative. While it is not beyond dispute, this right may be the best justification of the universal practice of allowing an individual to parent a child even when better prospective parents for that particular child are available and willing to replace the existing parent. The argument, in a nutshell, is: