If 1) we are morally responsible for the foreseeable results of my actions and inactions and if 2) all human beings will eventually die can I derive that 3) biological parents are morally responsible for the death of their children? I would expect most people to agree with (1) and (2), and to be shocked by (3). In addition, life can be worth living (the beauty and the richness of its experience hopefully offset the pain and suffering that come with it), but this seems to be a personal opinion that I have no right to impose on others. So, what right do biological parents have to impose their views (on such important matters) on future human beings that don't yet exist? Thanks.

I suspect that most people would think, on reflection that principle (1) is too strong. For instance, if it foreseeable that, because of your bad character, you will free-ride on fair rules of cooperation that we establish, does that make us morally responsible for your free-riding? I doubt it. At most, we should be responsible for what we freely cause. But we are not the cause of everything that foreseeably results from our actions. So I don't see that A's giving birth to B causes B's eventual death. If B dies by drowning that is caused by his falling into the the river, being unable to swim, or being too weak for the current (etc) not by his parents conceiving him. The most that could be said, and I'm not too confident even of this, is that parents are a foreseeable cause of their children's mortality (as opposed to any particular time, manner, and place of death). As I say, I'm not even sure that's right. But, if it was, so what? That would mean that we were morally responsible for our...

If you choose to bring a child into the world, you are necessarily condemning the child to suffer, in at least the following ways, if not more: (1) The child will experience physical pain. (2) No matter how hard you try, you will foist your own failings and fears onto the child, which will directly and indirectly cause the child great suffering and psychic pain. (3) The child will have to go through the difficult and painful process of figuring out how s/he fits (or doesn't) into a society with values that are -- for lack of a better general descriptive term -- pretty warped. (4) The child is likely to have excruciatingly-painful adolescent experiences figuring out the mating system and social cues of humans. If you want evidence for the magnitude of this pain, ask any adult to remember in detail one of these adolescent experiences without cringing. (5) Unless the child believes in God or the equivalent, s/he will live every day of his/her life knowing that any meaning to life is self-generated...

I think parenthood is a huge responsibility that is not always taken seriously enough, with the result that many people who are unable or unwilling to live up to the demands of good parenting have children and don't do well by them. We require education and licensure to drive a car yet leave unregulated the far more complex and arguably more consequential task of parenting. I am not defending state regulation of parenting (though I think it is a topic worth serious discussion), but I am claiming that parenting is morally serious business and that adults don't have a right to reproduce without being willing and able to be good parents or provide good parents. But you're not worried about cases involving bad parents. You seem to think that having children is always in principle "reprehensible," because despite the best efforts of good parents, children suffer, both as children and, later, as adults. Your position curiously seems to look at only one side of life's ledger, viz. the pain and other harms...