This information is being reported at a couple of international sites, but (if accurate) it has apparently been blacked out in the U.S.
The bomber at a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, has been identified as a 25-year-old man who left an online manifesto in which he described himself as a pro-mortalist, saying people didn’t give consent to exist.
The suspect is Guy Edward Bartkus, a 25-year-old man from Twentynine Palms, a small city about 35 miles northeast of Palm Springs. He left a 30-minute audio recording in which he explained his motive for the attack.
“I figured I would just make a recording explaining why I’ve decided to bomb an IVF building, or clinic,” he said at the beginning of the recording. “Basically, it just comes down to I’m angry that I exist and that, you know, nobody got my consent to bring me here.”
Describing himself as anti-life, he adds: “I’m very against [IVF], it’s extremely wrong. These are people who are having kids after they’ve sat there and thought about it. How much more stupid can it get?”
I’ve been calling out these antinatalist types for a while, they’re fucked up. It was getting pretty bad on reddit years ago. Almost feels like a psyops thing tbh with how hard it was being spread.
Pretty strong here on Lemmy too.
I get why people might choose not to have children, but to assert that others shouldn’t is a whole other thing.
Just in the last few days there was a post about how climate change is going to effect children born today - comments were pretty wild.
Arguing that people should consider not having kids because of the state of the climate, cost of living, state of society, overpopulation, or whatever, is fine as long as it is done respectfully of other people’s freedom to decide. But evidently that was not bombing guy’s approach.
I tried looking up some communities after I saw people complain about them. And 99.9999% of it is people venting about being told for the 50th time in twenty years that they’ll change their mind about having kids any day now. Or doctors refusing hysterectomies to unmarried women because they don’t have their husband consent(this still regularly happens in the US and Europe. To the point where there are resources where you can look up doctors who aren’t living in the 50s). Then you see the community brought up by other people and they’re often described as filled with people who want to murder children.
It’s honestly quite wild how much people take those generalized accusations at face value because they saw one or two peoeple say something inappropriate.
Yeah, the people always ragging on anti natalists honestly are liars. They are really just touchy and insecure about their decision to have kids. They have to justify that decision by demonizing anyone’s decision to the contrary
This comment in the context of a guy bombing other people’s IVF attempts? It’s a valid choice to opt out for oneself, it’s certainly not valid to force others to opt out.
Somewhere in the middle are the folks that take any opportunity to talk about how they think anyone having a kid is highly irresponsible, standing in judgement of people who have even one kid.
I don’t care if you want to refrain from kids and stand by that decision. Closest I’ll come to not minding my own business is to mention that people can change their minds, so you may want to hedge your bets with something reversible like an IUD instead of a hysterectomy, but ultimately you may stand by the decision and that’s all your business.
The true context here is that anytime the subject of having kids comes up, those who don’t have them are demonized. This context of this article is just being used an excuse to shield that demonization from any criticism, so fuck that royally.
is the opposite of:
It’s 100% none of anyone’s business if we might change our minds. Most won’t, and it’s even questionable for our parents to say that shit, let alone internet randos.
I have kids, and being told that I’ve mistreated them by having them is kind of offensive.
Way to ignore their valid point. No one is saying that
I have kids (some grown up) and sometimes spontaneously have this worry myself, just from looking at the news, especially the climate destruction and the persecution of LGBTQ+ people since none of my kids fit the “straight white cis men only” template of the right. When I was young I was quite clear that I didn’t want to have kids in a society that was destroying its planet. But adult decisions can be more complex and life went a different way.
Plenty of people seem to have no problem asserting that others should have children.
But really, the problem isn’t about asserting what one should/shouldn’t do. At that stage, it is still just one’s opinion. It becomes a problem when someone resorts to using intimidation, coercion, or outright violence to try and impose one’s will.
I’ve never encountered the problem of being told I should have children, nor intimidation, coercion, or violence.
Childfree people encounter this all the time.
It can happen in abusive relationships, but it would be rare in more general situations.
I never wanted to exist is soemthing I felt a lot when I realized death was a thing as a kid and religion felt fake, so I kinda get it, but its very extremist to the point of feeling like its out of a fantasy world, like no more humans because existence is suffering lol
These guys exist on lemmy as well. I’m not sure what sort of people are attracted to that doomer ideology but I fucking hate that defeatist mentality.
Oh I didn’t ask to be born, we have too many people anyway, you’re so irresponsible to have kids with climate change and fascism and all, entirely ignoring the fact that this is at best a niche ideology amongst the educated part of western societies and will have zero bearing on the future aside from diminishing that specific demographic.
If anything those people, the educated and skilled, should be reproducing more, not less, because ensuring a liveable tomorrow needs these kids. Your psy ops idea has some merit as well, it really seems odd that only western “liberal elites” are buying into this insanity.
Edit: wah
Nothing wrong with not choosing to have kids or whatever, but yeah, this is really taking that ideology to a ridiculous extreme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism
Antinatalists are beyond people who decided to not have kids.
It’s a respectable philosophical position with serious arguments. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with advocating it. Bombing for the cause is a different matter.
Not really. This is the same pants-on-head level reasoning that leads people to oppose medical procedures on animals or even suggest that we should kill them to avoid suffering merely because they can’t consent to anything. Just because they can’t consent doesn’t mean we can’t infer what their interests are.
Most of these people are just depressed and universalize that experience onto everyone else. But the reality is that most people are glad they were born, and parents can reasonably predict how the lives of their children will be. People who can’t provide a good environment for their kids should abstain, but I would even argue that for those who can, having kids is morally good since it brings the joys of life to more people.
You are arguing that most people enjoy life, and those who predict that others’ lives will be full of suffering tend to projecting their own feelings onto those as yet unborn. The antinatalist might argue that, though historically this may have been the case, the circumstances are now different: climate change or the likelihood of nuclear war (for example) is sure to bring suffering hitherto unknown to us, for everyone in the coming generations. The debate would then be about (1) how certain this future suffering is, (2) whether there’s a type of suffering that makes any life not worth living (or whether the value of life even relates to what suffering it contains), and (3) how much suffering, or what kind of suffering, we can best predict for these future people. We can have these debates, but I don’t think it’s obvious that the reasoning of someone who disagrees with you must be “pants-on-head level”. These are serious questions that intelligent people can consider, and the antinatalist position is a serious position that you don’t have to be an idiot to arrive at.
Historically, approximately half of children died before the age of 5.
But I also don’t think it’s fair to compare modern reproduction with historical, because the contexts are very different. For starters, it is more of a conscious choice now due to modern contraceptives.
Secondly, modern society (at least in developed nations) tend to place a significant value on human life. Look at how things like medicine and safety have improved over the past 100 years, and of course the huge drop in child mortality rates. There is much more consideration given to individual well-being. There is of course another angle to look at: maximizing joy vs minimizing suffering. Positive utilitarianism vs negative utilitarianism. Antinatalism clearly focuses on the latter.
I guess I’m specifically addressing the consent argument which I find very stupid. If you believe that future children will be subjected to horrible suffering, then it would make sense to abstain. But that’s not the main anti-natalist argument I’ve seen.
But I will say despite the popularity of doomerism I don’t think there’s much reason to think human life will be much worse overall than it was in the past. There will be incredible challenges and incredible joys and triumphs, just as there always has been. So this is more of a factual question, and I think it’s pretty clear on the facts that most people will continue living rewarding lives for the foreseeable future.
It’s more like the real problem here is extremism. Taking any belief to an absolutist and extreme degree is a problem. This also includes values and positions that are considered mainstream.
Not really. Just because you find something unethical doesn’t mean any of the shit you’re writing and implying here. You want people to think those random Redditors are murderers or would want to be but we both know that’s false.
I admit that I agree with the dude, but not to the point I’m going to start killing people over that belief.
Honestly, I think bringing children into this world right now is irresponsible. But that’s my opinion