Do the family planning policies in your country ensure all children receive what they need to succeed and a fair start in life relative to other kids? Do they ensure that the child will have a meaningful democratic role in making the rules under which they live, and the freedom and security of the natural world around them? If not, then those policies and the governments that push them are fundamentally illegitimate, or “preconstitutional,” and the people may reverse the violations by all means effective.

This is the claim Having Kids researchers recently published the Willamette Law Review, and the article is now suggested reading on the influential Legal Theory Blog administered by Georgetown law professor Larry Solum. In short? For people to be free, their governments have to be legitimate; to be legitimate, governments have to be inclusive of the people they claim to represent; and to be inclusive, they first have to comprehensively account (from a logical baseline) for each child, as well as the conditions in which that child is born, develops, and becomes able to meaningfully participate in democracy. In other words, family planning policies have to limit and intergenerationally decentralize the power each of us exerts over one another. Those policies have to free us from one another.

TAKE ACTION: The United Nations was designed to protect international peace and security, in part by protecting human rights. Instead, leadership there has promoted the interests of illegitimate governments that exploit, rather than invest in, future generations. Urge them to reverse course and do the right thing: https://havingkids.org/uncandobetter/