The 4th book in my distance learning course is called The Value of Life. Our assignment asks us to critically assess “We are forbidden to start bad lives, and are required to start good lives.”
The description ‘bad lives’ implies that life would be full of woe and that it would be immoral to subject a child to that prospect. I am not convinced that lives are necessarily ‘bad’ just because we often have to take the good with the bad’.
The philosopher Parfit gives us the proposition that a 14 year old girl wants to have a child. Should we do our utmost to persuade her to wait? Would a child born to a 14 year old necessarily have a worse quality of life than a mother 6 years older?
Other ideas around this subject are broadly utilitarian. Would having a child add to the universe’s total happiness?
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