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The Ethics of Population Policy for the Two Worlds of Population Conditions

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Abstract

Population policy has taken two divergent trajectories. In the developing part of the world, controlling population growth has been a major tune of the debate more than a half-century ago. In the more developed part of the world, an inverse pattern results in the discussion over the facilitation of population growth. The ethical debates on population policy have primarily focused on the former and ignored the latter. This paper proposes a more comprehensive account that justifies states’ population policy interventions. We first consider the reasons that support pro-natalist policies to enhance fertility rates and argue that these policies are ethically problematic. We then establish an ethics of population policy grounded on account of self-sustaining the body politic, which consists of four criteria: survival, replacement, accountability, and solidarity. We discuss the implications of this account regarding birth-control and pro-natalist policies, as well as non-procreative policies such as immigration, adoption, and unintended baby-saving strategies.

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Notes

  1. We do recognize that there is a possibility (theoretically and historically) that a democratic body politic may commit self-termination, or suicide, in a metaphoric sense. However, this issue is beyond the scope of this paper. Here we assume that a democratic body politic naturally has the intention to live.

  2. Note that only about half of the population potentially have reproductive capacities, including cisgender women and some transgender men. A hierarchy of respectability and recognized citizenship might come to exist between people who do not have reproductive capacities, people who do but do not procreate, and people who do and procreate. Thus, the government should make all efforts to prevent gender-based prejudices and stigmatizing effects of the resource redistribution and coercive birth-control measures, both discursively and practically.

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  1. Institute of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, 17 Xuzhou Rd, Taipei City, 100, Taiwan

    Ming-Jui Yeh & Po-Han Lee

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Yeh, MJ., Lee, PH. The Ethics of Population Policy for the Two Worlds of Population Conditions. Health Care Anal 32, 1–14 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10728-023-00462-y

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