In the article A New Argument for Anti-Natalism, philosopher Christopher Belshaw argues that antinatalism doesn’t necessarily entail – pro-mortalism.
Belshaw disagrees with David Benatar’s attempt to avoid pro-mortalism while arguing for antinatalism, and defines it as an ‘unstable anti-natalist and anti-mortalist mix’ which may made Benatar’s view more publically acceptable but also less consistent philosophically.

Basically, Belshaw’s criticism of Benatar is that if there is reason not to start lives, then there is reason to end them. And if the smallest amount of pain is sufficient to make life not worth starting as Benatar argues, given that everyone will experience at least some pain, Benatar’s argument for antinatalism entails pro-mortalism.
However, since I have addressed Benatar’s argument in relation to pro-mortalism in a former post, and since Belshaw himself doesn’t focus on Benatar’s argument but rather on his own argument for antinatalism, which he claims succeeds in avoiding pro-mortalism, this will be the focus of the following text.

Pleasure Springboards

Given that babies lack developed conceptions of time and of their own identities as persisting through time, Belshaw argues that as opposed to grown people who will often choose to endure pain in the present for benefits in the future, this can’t be the case with babies who don’t have desires about their longer term futures. Babies live only in the present, and have no desire to tolerate pain in order to acquire future pleasures. For someone unaware of its own future, a good future cannot make up for a bad present. Therefore, hurting babies in the present, for a benefit in the future, which they have no and can’t have an interest in, is morally unjustified.

According to Belshaw when it comes to whom who lacks developed conceptions of time, present pains are not justified by future pleasures. So babies suffer uncompensated pain. But the premise of his new argument for antinatalism goes way further than that. He claims that babies are distinct from the persons that develop from them. From his point of view the baby is one being, the person is another.
To illustrate and simplify the matter he suggests thinking about babies not as an integral gradual process of becoming a person but more in a sense of a distinctive transformation stage:

“Imagine that our relationship to a baby is like that of a butterfly to a caterpillar. Rather than a piecemeal emergence of complex psychological properties, and thus of the person, imagine instead that a baby is born, lives a baby life for about eighteen months, then falls into some sort of coma. Its life is over. After a year a pretty much fully-fledged person emerges. What should we think of this baby’s life? Is it worth living?” (p.124)

This distinction is of course very significant in an ethical sense, since not only that hurting babies is wrong because it is trading the present pains for the future pleasures of a creature who lacks developed conceptions of time, it’s a trade of pleasures and pains between different lives. And that is much worse, and highly questionable ethically.

Thinking about babies not from the point of view of the persons they supposedly become, but as a separate creature, then that creature – who has no developed notion of itself, or of time, no desire to live on into the future, no ability to think about pain and decide to endure it – experiences a lot of suffering. That is the case of even totally healthy babies. They all come into the world screaming, cry a lot, suffer colic and teething pains, stress, discomfort, emotional distress and etc. Therefore Belshaw argues that a baby’s life is not worth living.
Some may argue that a baby is an indispensable stage in creating a wholly worthwhile life, but this is not at all in the interests of, and brings about no compensations or benefits for – the baby. It would have been better for the baby had it never been created.

Belshaw argues that gradualism has no bearing here:

“Even if we come into existence by degrees, the two beings here remain distinct. And so the conclusion still stands. If we value our own lives, want there to be more people in the world, we may well continue to make babies. But what’s good for them isn’t good for us, and vice versa. We’re exploiting them, and exist only because this other creature has suffered. I may be glad that there was a baby. But it would have better for the baby never to have been born.” (p.124)

So basically his argument is that the creation of a person necessarily involves the creation of a baby which isn’t a person but is certainly a sentient creature, and one who suffers very much, without consent, and without compensation as the person that would develop from that baby is not a continuation of the baby. The creation of a person necessarily involves an exploitation of a baby. It is forcing suffering on a creature so that someone else would benefit, because it is not that the pleasures of the future person compensate the baby for its pains, and the baby has no concept or any interest in the future.

Arguable Conception and Unarguable Exploitation

Belshaw doesn’t seem to be bothered with a person being created, but with a baby being created in the process of creating a person. He is bothered with the harms caused to the baby, harms for which the baby would never be compensated. He is bothered with the harms that creating a person brings about not to the person created but to the baby which is according to him, although an indispensable stage of a person, still a separate entity.
Since Belshaw separates between a person and the baby that person had developed from, his argument is actually more of a version of the harm to others argument than it is a version of Benatar’s argument. Only that in Belshaw’s version of the harm to others argument, although there should be no disputes regarding the ‘harm’ part, there are many regarding the ‘others’ element. While his distinction between a baby and the person that grows from that baby is disputable, in the case of the original version of the harm to others argument, meaning absolutely unquestionable harms caused to absolutely unquestionable others, there is no room for any dispute. The only reason that nevertheless there is much dispute is because people are speciesist and careless about the suffering of others, not because the sacrifice of trillions of sentient creatures can ever be ethically justified.

The specific distinction Belshaw claims for may be arguable but the sentiment isn’t.
Even if it is disputable that each person necessarily exploits the baby that s/he supposedly developed from and that each person exists only because a baby has suffered, given that each person needs to feed oneself, dress oneself, clean oneself, clean oneself’s clothes, heat oneself in the winter, cool oneself in the summer, live somewhere, work somewhere, move around somehow, entertain oneself, consume enormous amounts of energy, produce enormous amounts of waste, and etc., and considering that each of these necessarily harm others, it is undisputable that each person necessarily exploits others and that each person exists only because others have suffered.

And people don’t even seem to care that much about the fact that numerous other sentient creatures are suffering so they can enjoy themselves. Most are still choosing, time and again, the most harmful ways to feed themselves and regardless of how harmful it is to others. Harming others while consuming food is inevitable, even if it is plant based, local, organic and seasonable, but most people insist on the worst kinds of food production, ones that involve the greatest exploitation and suffering. Therefore, in most cases, creating a person is sacrificing chickens to be cramped into tiny cages with each forced to live in a space the size of an A4 paper, calves to be separated from their mothers, and cow mothers to be left traumatized by the abduction of their babies, pigs to suffer from chronic pain and various diseases, sheep to suffer from lameness, turkeys to barely stand as a result of their unproportionate bodies, ducks to live out of water and in filthy crowded sheds, rabbits to be imprisoned in an iron cage the size of their bodies, geese to be aggressively plucked for their feathers, and male chicks to be gassed, crushed or suffocated since they are unexploitable for eggs or meat.

So even if you reject Belshaw’s distinction within a person, the following description he made is surly the case when it comes to a person’s relation with others “we are inevitably free-riding on the several misfortunes of small, helpless and shortlived creatures”.

Even if you disagree with Belshaw’s distinction between the future person’s supposed wholly worthwhile life and the baby’s lack of any interest, compensations or benefits for that, you can’t disagree that other creatures surly lack of any interest, compensations or benefits for a person’s supposed wholly worthwhile life. Even if we refuse to accept Belshaw’s distinction, the thousands of creatures overall that would be harmed so a person would benefit, will not be compensated. Therefore even without his distinction move, the creation of a person is indeed a trade of pleasures and pains across different lives.

Belshaw’s argument may be new but in some ways it reflects on an old problem. He deeply emphasis the exploitation of babies for the pleasures of persons, yet he deeply ignores the obvious exploitation – one that doesn’t require the metaphysical complexity of differentiating between a person and the baby from which that person had developed – of probably thousands of nonhuman animals by each human person.

Preventing that suffering is my main motivation. And people being so speciesist and careless about the suffering of others is my main reason not to wait for them to change.
If Belshaw’s main motivation is to prevent babies from being sacrificed for the sake of persons while avoiding pro-mortalism for persons, he can support a non-pro-mortalist option, but still ensure that people will stop sacrificing babies. Although for slightly different motives and perceptions than mine, he can support forced sterilization.

References

Benatar, D. Better Never to Have Been (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Belshaw, C. A New Argument for Anti-Natalism South African Journal of Philosophy 31 (1) 117-127(2012)