Cases where there is no choice and we have to decide for others, are always cases of existing people that we assume have an interest that we act on their behalf without consent if it cannot be given, and it is always in order to benefit them. But this is not the case when creating new people. Before someone is created, s/he does not want to exist, does not seek to exist, and it is not in her/his interest to exist simply because there is no one at all. Before the creation of a person there is no one who needs to be created. It is a person’s creation that creates that person’s needs, so that person’s creation cannot be justified supposedly in the name of some prior need of that person. Before someone was created there is no one who wants us to do something for him/her or has any interest whatsoever and therefore it is not morally justified to decide for that person.
Paternalism is morally justified when there is a person with a need for us to make a decision for her/him under some circumstances. The situations in which it is justified to make decisions for others are cases where a person has lost the ability to make decisions for oneself, and if we do not make decisions for this person s/he or others will be harmed. This is absolutely not the case when creating new people. No person will be harmed if we decide not to create them.
There are cases where you have to decide for others because there is no choice, but in the case of reproduction there is a choice and that is not to impose all kinds of things on someone who did not ask for anything. After all, your children didn’t ask you to create them, they didn’t ask to live, they didn’t ask to look like you, they didn’t request you as parents, they didn’t ask to be forced to work to support themselves, they didn’t ask to take care of themselves so they wouldn’t suffer, they didn’t ask to do all kinds of things that they have no choice but to do from the moment it was chosen for them that they exist, they did not request the body they found themselves in, the personality that was developed for them, their temperament, the era they live in, the place they were born, they did not ask for anything and can hardly influence anything. They are forced to enter into an endless series of compromises on everything in their lives.
We shouldn’t decide anything for anyone unless someone already exists and we know for sure that it is in their interest but their capability to decide for themselves is absent for some reason, or in cases where deciding for someone else will prevent greater harm that will occur if we don’t make a decision for them.
Paternalism can only be justified when it is the lesser of two evils in a given situation where someone cannot make decisions for themselves. Creating a new person is not the lesser of two evils. The option of not creating a person at all is not bad for those who do not yet exist, and therefore we have no need or justification to make decisions for those who do not yet exist. In fact, there is no person at all before someone is created, therefore there is no possibility at all to make decisions in her/his favor or for her/him. The decision to create a person is necessarily a decision in favor of and for the creators, and it is in no way a situation where there is no choice but to decide for someone else.
Besides, how does the fact that sometimes there is no choice but to make decisions for others in situations that are not planned or known in advance justify a situation in which we knowingly and intentionally make decisions for others?