• Ethics
• Reproductive Medicine
• Public Policy

In ‘Towards an ethics of pronatalism in South Korea (and beyond),’ Lee argues that certain pronatalist policies and programmes enacted by the state presuppose and reinforce objectionable social norms, for example, pathologising people who deviate from the script of marriage and children and imposing disproportionate burdens on women.1 The argument suggests that instead of managing ‘symptoms’ (eg, individual motivations towards or against having children), the state should address their ‘aetiology’ (eg, domestic inequalities and environmental pollutants). However, even while progressing towards these goals, it remains an open question whether addressing them would work any better at boosting certain countries’ low birth rates or maintaining them in the long term. While Lee accepts that the “justifications for pronatalist incentives … are well founded,” she effectively undercuts the authority of the state to engage in them.

For example, Lee only grudgingly accepts the “so-called ‘problem’ of fertility decline” as a concern in its own right. She treats the state’s efforts at boosting fertility rates as almost beside the point relative to “several serious issues,” namely the “variegated social and relational concerns” that constitute barriers to wanting …