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even if the sexual intercourse is between consenting adults, and even if the
parents are assumed to know beforehand that their child will not be born with
a severe and permanent handicap. Any person (however normal or healthy)
faces myriad risks of perceptible damage against his wishes during his lifetime.
The act of causing his existence is thus of a kind that poses risks of harm to
others, and is properly within society s jurisdiction.11
Nobody has a moral right to produce children as he or she pleases.
Rather, society has legitimate authority to regulate such acts of production.
Moreover, general expediency dictates that society should exercise coercion
against those who, by proposing to bring others into the world without a
reasonable chance of a satisfying life, threaten to cause grave harm to them. As
we have already discussed in Chapter 6, Mill makes clear that couples ought to
be prevented from giving birth to children who will not have at least the
ordinary chances of a desirable existence (V.15, p. 304). In countries either
overpeopled, or threatened with being so , moreover, interference with even
the most caring and well-off couples seeking to produce children beyond a
very small number , may also be justified, to prevent harm to labourers, whose
competitive wages tend to be driven below a customary subsistence level by
overpopulation (ibid.).
To force people to satisfy their moral obligations in this matter, marriage
may be legally prohibited between parties who cannot show that they have
the means of supporting a family (ibid.). Compulsory birth control legislation
might also be expedient in some contexts. Even harsh legal measures might be
appropriate to protect unlucky children and punish their irresponsible parents,
205
GENERAL I SSUES
including placement of the children in foster homes, fines and compulsory
work programmes for the parents in aid of child support, and so on.
Perhaps some assume even today that society has no business meddling
with the freedom of couples to expand their families as they see fit. But the
assumption is misplaced from the perspective of Mill s liberty principle:
It still remains unrecognized, that to bring a child into existence without
a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but
instruction and training for its mind, is a moral crime, both against the
unfortunate offspring and against society; and that if the parent does not
fulfil this obligation, the State ought to see it fulfilled, at the charge, as far
as possible, of the parent.
(V.12, p. 302, emphasis added)
Would implementation of the doctrine result in a
social revolution?
It seems that J.T. Mackenzie may have been on to something back in 1880,
when he insisted that Mill s doctrine reaches into all corners of life as we know
it in modern commercial societies, and contains the seeds of a social revolution
(as reprinted in Pyle, 1994, pp. 397 8). Among many other things, its
implementation would put a stop to the employment of any form of coercion
against harmless wrongdoing and all that.
From a Millian perspective, so-called harmless wrongdoing is an
incoherent phrase. There is no such thing, notwithstanding Feinberg s impressive
classification of putative acts of this sort (1984 8, Vol. 4, p. 19, Diagram 28
1). Purely self-regarding acts, harmless to other people, are properly beyond
morality. If there is no perceptible damage to others against their wishes, there
can be no immoral act, or wrongdoing. Rather, there is a moral right to absolute
liberty of self-regarding conduct. Any form of coercion against self-regarding
acts is illegitimate, and constitutes unjustified paternalism. Such paternalism
can be hidden by redescribing others mere dislike of self-regarding conduct as
some type of impersonal evil that lurks in the social atmosphere, independently
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THE LI BERTY DOCTRI NE I N PRACTI CE
of any perceptible damage to them. But, underneath the patina of murky
terminology, it remains unjustified paternalism.12
Mill s simple and radical liberal message vanishes under a cloud of
redefinitions and distinctions in Feinberg s approach, where it is replaced by a
complex, and ultimately ambiguous, message that departs cautiously, if at all,
from the current convictions of American legal culture. After distinguishing two
senses of harmless wrongdoing (corresponding to his two senses of harm),
Feinberg argues that liberals must consider coercion to prevent what he calls
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