Fertility and Coercion

Abstract

This essay is based on lectures given at the University of Chicago Law School and Kings College in Cambridge England in 1995. The author offers a discourse on the rights and consequences within norms and laws of reproduction and general issues panic-based reasoning the consequences of population expansion the social development of women and the justification for or lack thereof of coercive birth control. It is argued that public policies that promote social development gender equity and individual responsibility of the family are appropriate population solutions. A theory of justice should value personal liberty and basic autonomy including the exercise of reproductive rights. Impoverished people value well-being and economic security even if they do not value in fact freedom or reproductive freedom in particular. The denial of reproductive freedom in favor of coercive restrictions can be justified if at all only by strong positive consequences such as well-being and economic security. There is little evidence of such a trade-off. There is some evidence that coercion works faster than what can be achieved by social change and development. Coercive family planning has serious consequences for reproductive freedom infant mortality and female infanticide. There is no contrary argument against reproductive rights which as a Jeremy Bentham term hinge on acceptable consequences. Libertarians such as Robert Nozick assign rights as a force of their own. The author strikes a balance and presents arguments for a consequential system incorporating the fulfillment of rights among other goals.