The drive to perpetuate the human species has acquired new meaning in the context of environmental destruction and its relation to human unconscious motivations. Procreative urges have inconveniently become the heritage of a past era. This ancient genetic imperative has yet to reconcile itself with the fact that human procreation has become a planetary malignancy. No other species is capable of increasing its numbers until it chokes on itself. No other species would condemn those who wish to terminate unwanted pregnancies and yet simultaneously fails to provide for those already in existence. This is largely due to adult projection of the fear of death onto that of the foetus.
Could it be wrong to not have a child? Pope Francis apparently thinks so, in 2018 chiding couples who choose to remain childless as ‘selfish’, and insisting that: ‘A society with a greedy generation, that doesn’t want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk, is a depressed society.’