Matriz de Evaluación De los Factores Externos EFE

The non-identity problem132 has been taken to show that an individual cannot be harmed when brought into existence in non-ideal circumstances, if the individual’s very existence necessarily depends on those non-ideal circumstances.133 Consider Parfit’s example.134 A fourteen year old girl chooses to have a child, but because of her age, lacks the resources she would otherwise have had if she had delayed her pregnancy. However, if the girl would have waited before having a child, a different child would exist because different gametes would have given rise to the pregnancy. Given that the child would not have existed at all if his mother had not chosen become pregnant when she did, Parfit concludes that the child has no grounds to claim that he has been harmed by his mother’s

132

Parfit, op. cit.

133

A commonly accepted amendment to Parfit’s argument is that no harm arises in these circumstances only when the individual brought into existence has a life minimally worth living. I find this amendment plausible, but the details of this debate are not essential to the argument I make. For a discussion of the amended view, see: Feinberg, Joel. "Wrongful Life and the Counterfactual Element in Harming." Fenberg, Joel. Freedom and Fulfillment . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. 3-36.

134

decision. For Parfit, this conclusion holds even if the mother’s lack of resources results in considerable hardship for the child.

Someone might rely on an analogous example involving a gamete provider to try to show that gamete providers owe very little to their biological offspring. For instance, we could imagine a sperm donor who decides to provide gametes in conditions that make him unable to provide any support to his biological offspring. This inability to provide support might arise due to the gamete provider’s lack of resources, or because he provided gametes in a way that render him unable to have any knowledge about the identity and circumstances of his biological offspring. Furthermore, we could imagine that the gamete provider’s biological offspring suffers from a severe lack of resources that could have been avoided if the gamete provider would have been diligent when making his gametes available to others. In this case, if we accept the conclusion of the non-identity problem, we cannot say that the gamete provider has harmed the child since the child would not have existed if the gamete provider would have acted differently. This result might be taken to imply that if a gamete provider helps create a child under conditions that make it impossible for him to ensure his biological offspring has

reasonable chance at a desirable life, he does not harm the child. This seems to provide a way out of the more onerous responsibilities required by the modified Millian account I outlined previously.

However, this argument gets the relationship between harm and care-taking responsibilities for gamete providers backwards. In chapter one I argued that because gamete providers freely and intentionally help to create vulnerable individuals, they are responsible for taking certain steps to ensure that harms do not befall their biological

offspring. Determining whether coming into existence under certain conditions is itself a harm is not the relevant question. Rather, what is important is whether gamete providers have a responsibility to prevent certain harms from coming about. Consider the camp counselor example from chapter one. The responsibility to intervene in a fight between campers does not arise because the counselor has herself brought harm about, but because she stands in a certain kind of care-taking relationship to the campers under her care. Similarly, it is perfectly consistent to think that gamete providers have care-taking

responsibilities for their biological offspring even if we do not think these responsibilities derive from some harm they themselves have wrongly caused.

By providing gametes under conditions that make it impossible to provide resources to their biological offspring, the gamete providers put themselves in a position that renders them unable to fulfill their responsibilities, and this itself is morally

problematic. Though a gamete provider could claim that he did not intervene to help his biological offspring when appropriate because he did not know that intervention was needed, clearly certain forms of ignorance are themselves blameworthy and do not

mitigate the wrongfulness of one’s actions, but may in some circumstances even augment it.135

Considerations arising from the non-identity problem might provide reasons for doubting that gamete providers harm their biological offspring if they provide gametes in circumstances that make it impossible to provide future support if the need arises. However, my argument demonstrating that gamete providers have responsibilities does not rest on the claim that they owe restitution for harm. Because my argument does not

135

A famous example is Aristotle’s discussion of ignorance and its relationship to culpability. See

rely on the claim that gamete providers harm their biological offspring, the theoretical issues raised by the non-identity problem have no bearing on my claim about gamete providers’ responsibilities.