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November 16, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Having many children is “wrong, or at least morally suspect,” an ethicist wrote in an article for NBC about the impact of family size on the environment.

More people means more carbon emissions, Dr. Travis Rieder of the Berman Institute of Bioethics wrote. Parents are responsible for the “carbon footprints” of their children while they’re young, Rieder wrote.

He compared parents having many children to releasing murderers from prison.

“If I release a murderer from prison, knowing full well that he intends to kill innocent people, then I bear some responsibility for those deaths — even though the killer is also fully responsible,” wrote Rieder. “My having released him doesn’t make him less responsible (he did it!). But his doing it doesn’t eliminate my responsibility either.”

“Something similar is true, I think, when it comes to having children: Once my daughter is an autonomous agent, she will be responsible for her emissions. But that doesn’t negate my responsibility,” he suggested.

“Here, once again, we see self-loathing Leftists trashing their fellow human beings, and dressing up their own selfish sexual behavior–which generally involves avoiding forming families and bearing children–as somehow virtuous,” Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, told LifeSiteNews.

“Once again, we see ‘science’ abused to justify the most radical kind of social changes,” said Mosher. There’s no scientific evidence that “kids are bad for the earth” and “it hasn't even ‘proved’ that there is such a thing as ‘global warming,’” he said.

“Like with any high-cost luxury, we should limit our indulgence” in having children, Rieder argued. “If having one fewer child reduces one’s contribution to the harms of climate change, the choice of family size becomes a morally relevant one.”

“I don’t think there is a tidy answer to the challenging questions of procreative ethics,” Rieder wrote, claiming he is “certainly not arguing that we should shame parents, or even that we’re obligated to have a certain number of children.”

However, “that does not mean we’re off the moral hook,” he concluded, and society needs to consider “the ethics of making babies.”  

“This article isn't ‘science,’ it's pure propaganda,” said Mosher. “It's the kind of ‘brainwashing’ that Governor Moonbean of California – also known as Jerry Brown – called for at the recent Vatican conference. Shame on NBC for publishing such nonsense.”