Abstract

Given the link between over-population and climate change, and the high levels of consumption in affluent societies, several scholars have recently raised scepticism that there is a human right to decide the spacing and number of one’s children, or even that there is a human right to procreate at all. In this chapter, I depart from this philosophical trend and explain why there is a human right to choose to procreate and to have multiple children. I argue that philosophical accounts advocating for limited procreation tend to rely on at least one of three problematic assumptions. These are assumptions about children’s moral status, parental entitlements, and the actual value of the parent-child relationship as compared to other environmentally unfriendly activities.