The impending overturn of Roe. v. Wade has starkly and publicly revealed the new reality facing the United States. The anti-choice, pro-gun, ‘anti-everything-good’ conservatives are playing their hand face up. They have shamelessly stopped pretending to play by the rules and – if you’re listening – they’re telling us exactly what our future looks like. For 99 percent of us, it doesn’t look good.
The powers that be – mostly old, white, dusty antiques like Mitch McConnell, Eugene B. Meyer, Donald Trump – are climbing the castle walls in their 50-year strategy to cement in place their power and influence. As the world changes around them, as American society embraces all different stripes of people, the old guard conservatives and the wealthy 1 percent are terrified of losing their grip.
The Fair Start Movement approaches this fight from a new and different perspective. We believe that: No government, state or federal, has a legitimate standing to mandate the birth of every child conceived unless it is prepared to care for those children beyond the birth canal and give them a Fair Start.
At this critical crossroads in human history, we must acknowledge that every child born has a right to start out in decent circumstances. We must account for the wellbeing, equity and personal development of future generations if we are to foster a real democracy where each person’s voice matters. We must accept that our current system destroys the environment and does nothing, in fact takes negative action, to mitigate the oncoming crises.
We already see progress. Many people agree with our vision and are committed to real, positive change. As we build a truly democratic population, wherein everyone has a voice that is heard, we will move away from the toxic, crumbling society of today.
We will honor individual rights and guarantee universal healthcare. We will return to nature by respecting our place in the ecosystem, giving and taking sustainably. We will escape the domination of the selfish, greedy, wealthy few whose plan for the future – assuming they have one – accounts for their survival alone.
In the meantime, we must work within the system we have. The State must accept its obligation to invest heavily in common-sense family planning programs and science-based sex ed. Those items alone will automatically lower abortion rates and teach young people the truth about having and growing a healthy family.
The State must break its unconstitutional commitment to Christian moral dictates and adopt a reality-based approach to governing. It is absurd and completely unacceptable that 350 million+ people of every faith are governed based on the ethos of bronze-age men.
We must shift our paradigm away from the endless-growth-economy fantasy, which demands that mothers continually produce their supply of workers and consumers. Prisoners to boot.
Let’s change the conversation.
Fair Start has already taken action against ExxonMobil, demanding that they include the health of future generations when making policy changes. They talk a good game about how sustainable they are, but we have challenged them to take concrete steps toward guaranteeing the future of our species rather than living by the annual quarter.
The leak came out late on May 2, 2022. A source close to the Supreme Court had scooped Politico, leaking Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, finding for the defendant. Roe v. Wade would be overturned.
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey was next on the chopping block. Half of the country mourned. The other half took a victory lap, then quickly got back to work furthering their agenda.
We cannot go backward from this. We must find our way and define our new reality in a post-Roe world.
To that end, the Fair Start Movement has a vision that, hopefully, can breach the divide and bring us together. Everyone could have a slice of what they want in the debate over abortion.
Historically, the pro-choice lobby has focused heavily on an individual’s right to bodily autonomy and protecting their access to abortion. This approach takes into account only one stakeholder: the person seeking reproductive care.
In fact, we argue that there are at least three interested parties in each case.
1) The pregnant person
2) The future child (Not the fetus, but the future person if they were brought to term)
3) The community/society at large, which would be set up to help raise and nurture each baby born to them
In this vision, all people would identify as members of their communities. Society would be structured around a set of largely self-governing groups. Each member would begin life with a Fair Start, having the access and opportunities afforded to all. A pregnant person would be free to decide how and when to start or grow their family. The community would support them equally through any decision they made.
Any future version of Roe would require that we prepare healthy space and allocate resources for future generations. The current ‘family-planning’ model, and indeed Roe as well, did nothing to protect and nurture future children. A Fair Start would mean that each child begins life:
Being wanted
Being cared for physically, spiritually and financially
Being assured a level of comfort and opportunity only the wealthy enjoy today
If those criteria were met for every child born into society, our communities would automatically begin to thrive. Once one generation of Fair Start Kids is established, life will continually improve as long as this new egalitarian mode of living remains the norm.
The reality we face in the wake of Alito’s scoffing assertion that Roe v. Wade was “egregiously wrong from the start” will include forced pregnancy and birth. It will worsen poverty, crime and human suffering. It will impact and end careers. Mental and physical health will decline. It will continue to turn a blind eye to the Climate Crisis. It will do nothing to improve the circumstances of anyone but the 1 percent currently alive and in power today. It will create our progeny but ignore their basic needs. It will create more children, but it will not be bothered about their quality of life.
We hope that our approach would plant the seeds of an empathetic, self-governing populace – one that cares for all existing (and future) members. We envision a community that does not dictate personal choices, that respects privacy and welcomes and cares for each member and each baby with open arms.
For a start, working within our current anti-choice, anti-privacy reality, we have a proposal that would help women and reproductive health care professionals.
The Fair Start SMA Project: Educate and Inform to Protect Choice
Fair Start’s initial response to the Politico leak was to issue a broad challenge to Gov. Greg Abbot (R) of Texas, demanding that he revise his draconian, myopic and cruel Texas SB8 bill. SB8 prohibits abortion six weeks after the pregnant person’s last menstrual period. Oklahoma was close on Abbot’s heels.
After May 2, we knew we had to think beyond Texas. Our modified proposal will go further. It will elevate and scale education programs for abortion-care professionals on supporting patients through self-managed abortions (SMAs). SMAs will increase tenfold once Roe is overturned, and these solutions are typically safe today thanks to medications like Plan B, sometimes called the “Morning After Pill.”
We will ensure our health-care professionals have access to specialized pro bono legal services when we launch in Texas and Oklahoma. Ultimately we aim to organize a fleet of pro bono lawyers who will intercede for educators, their professional students and patients in case of legal interference by the state.
We need your help creating this safety net! Anyone seeking abortion care, and in particular anyone who provides it will be on very shaky ground. We reject the notion of health care professionals in prison over helping someone take charge of their life.
A ‘Right’ to Elevate and Empower All
At Fair Start, we aim to replace the current outdated parent-centric family planning paradigm with one that is child-centric, ecologically restorative, objective and fair. This includes recognizing and promoting each person’s basic, singular and overarching ‘Right’ to life, safety, adequate food and shelter. Granting The Right to all at birth will also allow everyone to pursue their dreams, because they will not begin life at the bottom.
The concept of The Right is inspired by the concrete standards laid out in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Beyond children’s rights, The Right would guarantee everyone independent, autonomous control over reproductive and other personal choices. Moreover, it would acknowledge and elevate the other two stakeholders in the family planning process: the future child and the community.
FSM pioneered the claim that The Right supersedes all others, because without the ideals The Right represents, personal autonomy, freedom and potential are null and void. When a child is born into poverty or abuse, the pursuit of higher goals and self-actualization are impossible. This concept is supported by voluminous peer-reviewed and recommended research.
Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at Cambridge University, writes “Our children and grandchildren have a right to sufficient food, shelter, and physical security, and to opportunities to develop and flourish.”
Today’s parent-centric, short-sighted approach does not even begin to gesture toward the looming and blatantly obvious questions about our future. It is focused squarely on ensuring that every pregnancy ends in birth. After that, good luck and good riddance.
Call to Action – Join the Good Fight
We know we have to take this one step at a time. Our ideals are lofty and would certainly face strong opposition. The fact is, however, our vision is all-inclusive. We want to bring everyone along into a gentler society focused on life and happiness, not locked in a deathmatch over wealth and power.
The government and societal models we live in today were simply dreamed up by old white men throughout the ages. It doesn’t have to be this way. None of this is carved in stone. Human suffering is a bug, not a feature! Governments CAN nurture and protect their citizens instead of groveling before their big donors.
The truth is: Human potential is vast. The only thing keeping us in this deadly downward spiral is a lack of imagination. Roe v. Wade is emblematic of our predicament. Ultimately these kinds of laws will become unnecessary. In the future, fairness and universal equality will be the base of the pyramid, not a pipe dream.
As the Supreme Court of the United States prepares to strike down Roe v. Wade, paving the way for the states to ban abortion, many are wondering how we arrived in this place. While the pro-choice lobby and legal maneuvering meant to protect the right to terminate a pregnancy has focused on women’s bodily autonomy, there are actually at least three interests at stake in that decision: 1) Women’s bodily autonomy, 2) the interests of the future child (not the fetus, but the child that would have otherwise existed), and 3) the interests of society more generally. As a safe rule of thumb if a mother does not want to have a child, interests two and three are not going to go very well.
And while women’s bodily autonomy is crucial, interests two and three actually precede it because that autonomy occurs after and within the formation of society – which is the thing two and three account for.
So how did we all kill Roe? We should have prioritized two and three, or the importance of the autonomy because by preventing forced parenthood it prevents bad parenting, the social chaos that results, population-driven ecological disasters like the climate crisis, and other things that now threaten us and our kids’ future.
That bigger move, decades ago, might have resulted in a highly developed, self-governing and empathetic national populace unlikely to fall for people like Donald Trump. That’s not the populace we have now.
It’s not too late to make Roe three-sided, and as such much weightier, than it was before.
Here’s how: Help us fund a pilot program for the Reincarnation of Roe.
The Fair Start SMA Pilot Program
The Fair Start Movement (FSM) is dedicated to replacing the parent-centric and subjective family planning paradigm that fundamentally created the climate and inequity crises with a new paradigm of child-centric, ecologically restorative and objective systems of planning that are treated as the first and overriding human right (“The Right.”) The Right is premised on the concrete standards in the Children’s Convention, and is more weighty than traditional reproductive rights because it accounts for the interests of future children and society more generally, rather than maintaining a myopic focus on parental interests.
While initial FSM proposals centered on furthering The Right through a broad challenge to a recent ban on abortions in Texas, this modified proposal will support elevating and scaling programs of education for self-managed abortion (SMA) by abortifacients for paramedical personnel across the U.S. by offering a high-profile pilot program for pro bono legal services to such personnel (the Project), initially in Texas and Oklahoma.
In democracy self-determination always begins with your place in the town hall. Always.
The key here is creating a movement of pro bono legal services interceding for SMA educators/providers that treat the service as the constitutional priority and human right with the biggest impact on our collective future. Note that while legal services for SMA do exist, we have yet to complete a comprehensive assessment of them. Note too that we will be expanding our initial research regarding safety.
The Project Goals:
1) To publicize a specific pilot program for priority pro bono legal services to paramedical personnel educating women in Texas and Oklahoma regarding SMA, as an example of the emergence of The Right, 2) to connect that story as a driver of prioritized pro bono legal services around the country from a network of firms we have access to.
Depending on progress on 1-2, we may add 3) developing eventual litigation regarding suing Texas over harm to children consigned to state foster care because of the state’s historic abortion laws, which will include direct action demands for wealth transfers from specific high-profile targets to pay for the resulting damages under the theory of The Right.
We may also peg #1 above to the filing of an amicus brief defending a specific physician in Texas, but we are still assessing the status of the case.
The key is creating a national movement of pro bono legal services interceding for SMA educators/providers that treat the service as the constitutional priority and human right with the biggest impact on our collective future.
Project AOMIs and Project budget:
Final Activity List:
1) To publicize a specific pilot program for priority pro bono legal services to paramedical personnel educating women in Texas and Oklahoma regarding SMA, as an example of the emergence of The Right:
Budget: $6000 – primarily towards two law firms, and two public relations firms.
To finalize recruiting two law firms we are in conversation with.
To complete the initial research, and determine the number of hours we can provide pro bono.
To assess the target educator/provider audience, and to provide the advice.
To publicize the process nationally, via two public relations firms we are in conversation with.
To connect with leading family planning organizations in the nation to see whether they will replicate the process.
2) To connect that story as a driver of prioritized pro bono legal services around the country from a network of firms we have access to:
Budget: $3,500 – primarily towards FSM administrative contractors, and follow-on services from the public relations firms.
To solicit interest from our network of pro bono firms.
To develop a script for why this work is a priority.
To recruit at least twenty (20) firms who can provide extensive pro bono services.
To evaluate the services provided.
To publicize the process and seek to triple the number of firms in a future round.
Which activities can and will be used as key performance indicators for quarterly reporting?
The number of news articles, the reach of those articles, and other communication impacts, including social media. There are more precise metrics we can obtain from the firms.
The number of educators/providers reporting positive encouragement and advice that altered their plans.
The number of leading family planning organizations that will replicate the process.
The number of law firms that commit to pro bono services, and the hours they will commit to.
Climate mitigation anyone?
Project review assessment includes these considerations for a successful project award:
– Does the project promote innovation and experimentation?
Yes. The Right as described herein is nascent in practice, but irrefutable, and Texas/Oklahoma provide ideal theaters in which to experiment with the messaging, political development, and eventual establishment of The Right.
– Does the design of the project include specific interventions that impact local or global population issues?
Yes. We intend to provide pro bono legal services in Texas and Oklahoma, and expand on that pilot towards a national provision of services. If this process furthers The Right, the impact on bending the population curve would outweigh many comparable efforts.
– Are there quantitative process and outcome measures that reflect the success of the project’s goals?
Yes, per the KPIs above.
– Does the project include new ideas and approaches that might improve or extend an activity into a new setting?
Yes, we have intentionally used a pilot-to-scale design, ideally around a movement that will be compelling.
Conclusion:
This project is not meant to further a particular goal while operating within the parent-centric and subjective family planning paradigm that fundamentally created the climate crisis. Rather it is meant to further a new fundamental movement that changes the paradigm towards child-centric, ecologically restorative and objective systems of planning that are treated as the first and overriding human right.
The Secretary General of the United Nations Promised to Mitigate Climate Change and Failed. Maybe His Son Can Help?
The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has promised to mitigate the climate crisis. He is obligated to support doing so in the most effective way possible because of his position. The most effective long-run change alters the conditions in which we permit children to be born, requiring redistribution of resources to incentivize and entitle better family planning. António has refused multiple requests from dozens of organizations to both effectively mitigate the climate crisis and prepare future generations to be resilient in the face of ecological degradation. António has refused to begin policy reforms that would eventually assure that every child born enjoy what they are promised by the Children’s Convention.
Nothing has a bigger impact. This solution operates, or mitigates, on multiple levels. We can bend the curve to benefit future generations, or stay a failed course.
Do what is effective.
And yet his son, Pedro Guimarães e Melo Guterres, has enjoyed a life of privilege that is relatively free from the ravages of the climate crisis. That’s not right.
Let’s engage Pedro directly to help pay what he owes, and to offset the costs an unfair family planning system placed on others – especially in the global south – while he benefitted as the son of an influential European politician. We can make that ask because just family planning is the first human right. And we can replicate this tactic with all world leaders.
If some will take their own lives to try to bend our world away from the worst of the crisis, the least we can do is short-circuit a political process that’s failed and instead engage with the adult children of world leaders to bend a curve that benefitted them at cost to others. Perhaps this action is too personal? Not really. Ignoring the interpersonal nature of intergenerational power dynamics is what fundamentally created the climate crisis. The children of world leaders can support redistribution of wealth that incentivizes/entitles socially and ecologically just family planning. Urge them to do so.
Contact Ashley@FairStartMovement.org to help us engage Pedro.
We can change this by all means effective because people come first.
We Can Democratize Russia and Disempower Putin by Targeting His Concentrations of Wealth to Instead Fund Child Development
Vladimir Putin was able to invade Ukraine and wage war crimes and atrocities because for decades he has been able to prevent democratization in Russia. One of the most fundamental ways he’s blocked reforms involves a decades-old system of pushing women to have children – or to be mothers for the motherland – instead of requiring democratic family reforms that would physicallylimit and decentralize the power of Putin, his state infrastructure, and the oligarchs. Putin could not operate if Russia had to invest equitably in children as democratic citizens, rather than exploit them as future workers and soldiers.
Family policy in Russia is the fundamental source of his power – expanding the base of the pyramid atop which Putin sits. And while much of the world opposes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, world leadership has done nothing to demand reform of his family policies. In many cases world leaders looked to Russia – which pays women to produce children – as a possible model of creating growth in their own nations, much the way they supported the globalized fossil fuel economies that helped create Putin.
The theme is the same – the United Nations and world leaders are outraged by the invasion, but complicit in ensuring the fundamental top-down power relations that enable it.
We can reverse this trend by embracing every child’s right to a Fair Start, ecologically and socially, as the first and overriding human right. This enables demands upon, and the taking, of wealth and other concentrations of power at the top. We do this to limit and decentralize those concentrations, and to instead empower future persons as democratic citizens.
Take Action:
1. Fair Start has urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to embrace Fair Start modeling as the first and overriding human right. Ask them to publicly support the right of young Russians to demand and take wealth from the power structures that support Putin. Atrocities begin with the creation of people inclined, through our power relations, to comit them. The United Nations should be destabilizing despots, not supporting family policies that prop them up. Contact them here.
2. Massive sanctions against oligarchs are a step in the right direction, but we don’t want resources fueling the fundamental problem by simply propping up declining democracies outside of Russia. Urge President Biden here to use the sanctions to explicitly support Fair Start reforms in the United States that would restore democracy, and make the United States a true leader in empowering people.
Every child born in Russia has a right to an ecosocial Fair Start in life, which will enable to safe, healthy and democratic future for all. Young Russians can fund their children’s future by taking wealth and resources from the top, from men like Patriarch Kirill, who pose a threat to the welfare and equality of all children. Russians can pressure him to admit this truth. Together we can fundamentally disempower Putin, and prevent future wars, by moving wealth and power from the top and into future generations. Here is an example of the change, in action.
Каждый ребенок, родившийся в России, имеет право на экосоциальный Справедливый Старт в жизни, который является основой безопасного, здорового и демократического будущего для всех. Такие люди, как патриарх Кирилл, представляют угрозу благополучию и равенству детей. Поэтому, мы должны заявить о том, что права детей перевешивают право собственности богатой верхушки. Вместе мы можем обезоружить Путина и предотвратить будущие войны, а также обеспечить Справедливый Старт будущим поколениям.
Putin sits atop a system where those with disproportionate power who chose him over democracy as he butchers civilians in Ukraine. How did he get there?
True democracies are created through family reforms that eliminate oligarchies and despots by ensuring children’s rights under the Children’s Rights Convention, including the right to equal opportunities in life, and to a meaningful voice in democracies surrounded by a safe and biodiverse natural world. Instead, world leaders are opting for a system that ensures old family hierarchies and unsustainable growth. That move fundamentally created the crises we face today, including the despotism of Vladimir Putin who rose to power on pronatal polices designed to create mothers for the motherland of Russia, not democracy.
Pushing women to have kids benefits who, exactly?
That system fundamentally supports wealthy strongmen around the world who then universally support population growth policies that expand their base, a population Ponzi scheme Nobel Laureates have recently called out.
That’s what you are seeing when men with disproportionate power push women to have kids, and we see these policies being pushed by many, from Vladimir Putin, to Mitt Romney, to Xi Jinping.
But 1) because these policies violate fundamental human rights, 2) because the beneficiaries of the growth never paid the full costs to our core values of the benefits they received, and 3) because every child’s right to an ecosocial Fair Start in life is the first and overriding human right, we can target the beneficiaries directly – governments supporting us or not – to redistribute the wealth to fund ecosocial Fair Starts in life.
So how do we target Putin’s economic base and move money from the top into Fair Start investing in women and future children, ideally in Ukraine?
The path to a better future is clear.
We hear a lot about Russian oligarchs, but plenty of American families – like the Koch brothers – helped prop up Putin over the years and still are. It’s time for citizen sanctions and reparations for ecosocial Fair Starts in life, rather than governments taking resources to reinforce the basic unjust power structure. Is the money better spent on physically building democracy in Ukraine, or going to governments for use by people like Donald Trump, were he reelected?
Exxon is one of those entities who propped up Putin, and one of the last companies to pull out of Russia after significant pressure. Many families in the U.S. are associated with the company and also enriched themselves through Putin. We can take those resources to reverse course and create the future we want. It’s not about the target as much as it is about the nature of the ask: We wish to change family policy to become a different sort of people than we are today, and will you pay what you owe to make that happen?
The first human right is the one that creates us, justly.
The longer we delay replacing dysfunctional family planning policies with the Fair Start model, the wider the gap between rich and poor will grow. At the same time, Having Kids and other organizations that support giving all kids a fair start in life rely on wealthy philanthropists and foundations to help fund this reform. While many funders want to, and want to eliminate giving their own kids a massive head start in life, others want to pass their privileged positions in life along to their kids.
In one extreme case, a family of billionaires is enabling their young children – through a family foundation – to drive the direction of several policy reforms, including the type of legislation progressive environmental groups would be allowed to introduce. Consistent with a trend that was thoroughly documented in a recent New York Times bestseller, the parents would prefer to enable their kids to disproportionately shape public policy, and in ways that make the average voter irrelevant.
What’s wrong with this picture? In a true democracy, there is no justification for giving some kids wealth and power at birth while allowing other kids to die from starvation, neglect, and abuse. But that happens in the United States and elsewhere all the time – and many of us just treat it as something that is beyond our control.
In a true democracy, we have to level the playing field for all kids. We have to move towards true equality of opportunity at birth. That’s what it means to constitute ourselves as free and equal people, and it’s the only way to understand what phrases like “We the People” in the United States Constitution, and other constitutions around the world, mean. Our constitutions must be interpreted to apply justice intergenerationally, and our failure to do so is driving the ecological and social crises we face today.
We owe our kids more than a world filled with rich families constantly passing their wealth and power forward, while other kids are born into conditions where statistically they have no chance to succeed.
It’s common to see people today sign their messages with a variety of pronouns. That act is meant to liberate people to identify themselves as they see fit – to self-determine, rather than be determined by others’ conceptions of gender, for example. Our language matters and shapes our experience, and self-determination – or freedom – is at the core of human rights.
Could pronouns be the key to an even larger form of self-determination?
Keep in mind that groups of people are inherently dynamic, with people constantly being born, and dying. So for the pronouns that relate to who will exist in the future, has the claimant accounted the most basic of values and building blocks of freedom: For ensuring future persons minimum levels of wellbeing, equality, their need for a safe and natural environment, and an influential voice in democratic systems? In other words, has the claimant accounted for the most important factor in any claim that we should do something – the people at stake – and how to ensure those people can self-determine, relative to a zero baseline, rather than be determined by others. In other words, can they account for how all the pieces fit together?
What we find is that because the creation of people – or having kids – is considered a matter of parental autonomy and private decision-making, we largely overlook people as the key factor (always he first and largest driver) in all prescriptive claims. In almost every legal system in the world today parents who have severely abused children have the right to have more children, even when those children will raised by the state. At the same time those systems do nothing to ensure the average citizen has a right to a safe and natural environment. That sad reality shows how deeply embedded unsustainable population growth – anthropocentrism – is in our systems. And as a result, the most important aspect of policy claims – the creation and sustainable development of each person – is treated as none of our collective business.That reality epitomizes how those at the top pit the most vulnerable against one another, and shows the need for reproductive justices reforms that free us from one another.
Urging people to specify their pronouns can help fix this. For example, when governments claim to have a climate policy, we can urge them to account for the actual people causing the emissions, the people subject to them, the people in both categories who will exist in the future, etc. You will be shocked to see how little thought goes into these matters of how people came to be, and will come to be.
Do you support nonprofits that protect children, animals, the environment, or human rights and democracy? Urge them to explain how population growth – the entry of new persons into the world – impacted their missions, what they did about that impact, and what they are doing now. Again, you will find that most groups did not create the results they claimed to have because they ignored the key factor shaping outcomes. And in terms of for-profit businesses, query how many have produced anything of truly objective value, and how many just rode a wave of valuation, demand and population explosion created by poor and unsustainable family planning that ensured no minimum levels of welfare for children (in blatant violation of things like the Children’s Rights Convention), abysmal levels of education, extreme inequity ensuring cheap labor, and bloated nation-states where the average person had no real voice in political outcomes. Did they simply profit from a system that mass produced consumers instead of developing capable, and truly free, citizens?
We can sharpen the questions. Have the claimants noticed how their answers group together people who do not trust each other at all, and could not possibly operate in truly consensual, integrated, and democratic systems of relative self-determination? If people don’t trust one another, how can they be in truly consensual systems of governance with one another? For example, if you have to lock your home because you do not trust the people in your country, why would you trust them as citizens empowered to help decide the fate of the nation? How will the claimant deal with this, or what might be called the constitutional dilemma (or Lesser Power Asymmetry) of how to include and empower people in legal systems, at the same time?
Discourse using the pregnant pronouns elicits and brings to the surface something very specific about all “should” claims: It is ubiquitous that we ignore the people in, and subject to, prescriptive claims. We can’t allow ourselves to make this mistake.
Our evasion derives from the simple fact that for many reasons, including a series of mistakes in the development of legal and political systems (like seeing power as violent domination rather than more subtle things, like bad parenting and climate emissions), human cognitive dissonances like temporal myopia, cultural taboos, deference to religion’s role in the family, racial and political sensitivities, etc., we ignore people’s creation and how their creation impacts ethics, morality, rules, law, policy, etc. We think of people abstractly, exogenously, and statically, instead of dynamically focusing on their creation, their development and how they constitute themselves together in self-determining democracies where human power is limited and decentralized. And yet, if we truly value people and self-determination, they will always be the first and most important factor in the things we prescribe.
Why? Because we are before we do, people are always the factor that comes first (or “lexically prior”), and because the vast majority of people and other animals whom we should care about will exist in the future and as such are especially vulnerable, their interests outweigh the interests of people alive today.
What is the usefulness of the information we get in pregnant pronoun discourse? Questioning people about the pronouns in the things they are prescribing helps us divide people into those committed to freedom, and those who are not. The former will choose to orient their claims from the perspective of, and with pronouns that imply, self-determining people who are assured minimum levels of wellbeing, equity, nature, and democracy. They will orient the creation of future generations – or family planning systems, laws, and policies – from a child-centric perspective, as proof of their empathy, and in way that gives children these things and allows them to constitute themselves in just and relatively self-determining communities. This is not about population; it’s about freeing people.
A Useful Divide
The latter, who can be termed precons, will not – either because they cannot empathize with the people their prescriptions impact, wish to exploit rather than invest in them, do not care if those people will constitute themselves as free and relatively self-determining people and instead are content with centralized systems of top-down power, etc. In other words, the discourse helps us identify the people we should not trust in our democracies, where the act of constituting ourselves – intergenerationally – liberates us. Distinguishing between the two and knowing the threats for what they are can mean the difference between building a future where people are free and relatively self-determining, something countless people died in wars of liberation to ensure, and not doing that. No ethic, morality, law, policy – or systems comprised of such things – is legitimate if it cannot hold up in pregnant pronoun discourse as promoting relative self-determination, and we may be obligated to violate the prescription and its systems in favor of systems that do.
Family planning is a driver behind many of the crises we read about in today’s news. But journalists rarely connect the dots.
A federal judge begins to question the wisdom of parents having unlimited numbers of children they cannot care for, and who live awful lives, raised by the state.
Studies confirm that the conditions in which kids are born determine their opportunities in life, destroying a myth that had legitimated the system of governance in the U.S. for decades.
Help journalists connect the dots! Contact Having Kids at media@fairstartmovement.org. We’ll help you submit editorials and letters to the publications you care about.
If you belong to a human rights, environmental or animal protection, and/or child protection organization or funder, ask them about their position on family planning. How is their position furthering their mission?
Speak out and protect your future. A better future means reforming family planning to focus on the child, first and foremost, to give every child a fair start in life.
