Abstract

Lee argues that pronatalist policies in countries suffering from declining birth rates, such as South Korea, are ethically flawed.1 The ‘soft’ pronatalist policies Lee describes aim at persuading citizens to reproduce. For Lee, coercive pronatalist policies are so obviously unacceptable as not to merit consideration. However, we suggest that this is an issue that requires further analysis. When ethicists regard certain possibilities as not worth debating, we miss opportunities to examine the basis for our convictions. In short, it behoves us now and again to challenge our convictions, especially if they seem inconsistent in relation to other views we hold. By comparing coercive pronatalism with enforced military conscription, we can notice some inconsistencies. South Korea—which Lee discusses in her paper—enforces military service, as do Austria, Switzerland, Ukraine and Finland to name a few. Many countries that do not currently conscript citizens retain the right to do so during wartime. Conscription is an example of coercive state intervention which, even if not widely endorsed, rarely generates outrage or even attention from ethicists.2 For those who accept that coercive conscription could in principle be justified, it is not easy to show why coercive pronatalism must be rejected without argument. Indeed, many of those who are alarmed about declining birth rates …