As Walter Goodnow Everett explains, it is the responsibility of parenthood to provide children with their moral rights:
The undue emphasis upon numbers as the criterion of value has led inevitably to the popular disregard of the responsibilities of parenthood. This is an evil which poisons life at its very source; it is an evil, too, which multiplies, affecting countless generations. It thwarts the production of a nobler race, stronger in body, clearer in intellect, and more generous in soul. All species of living beings are well-bred but man, and man for the most part very ill. The evil of irresponsible parenthood, not only in its economic but also in its other aspects, is one before which the evil of divorce shrinks into insignificance. Until those who are responsible for the education of the people deal with it seriously and vigorously, charity will be, as at present, helpless to touch a tithe of the actual needs of the poor, while the ever rising tide of population from the unfit, of whatever class, will continue to keep at a low point the average physical vigor and intellectual perfection of the race. Surely every child brought into the world has a moral right to decent food, clothing, and shelter, to proper recreation and physical development, and to an education that will fit it for some useful career, however humble. Where there is no reasonable prospect of such provision parenthood is irresponsible, and so far immoral; the child may have a right not to be born. (Quoted from Moral Values, by Walter Goodnow Everett, p. 245; New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1918.)
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For a brief biography of Walter G. Everett, click here.
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