Thank you so much, Michelle, Dave and Zayda!
POLITICS OPINION
Rejecting pregnancy and birth: The case against procreation
By Verena Brunschweiger | 14 March 2026, 11:00am |
Women’s oppression begins with reproduction — an assertion that, in 2026, feels more provocative than ever, writes Verena Brunschweiger.
“WE ARE NO LONGER just animals,” (The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution) writes the wonderful novelist, philosopher, and feminist Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) in her most famous book, The Dialectic of Sex — referring to procreation.
Whether it was due to the zeitgeist of that era or Firestone’s brilliance — it’s perfectly clear why the book was such a hit back then. It’s equally clear that it hardly interests anyone in the year of the global backlash, 2026. When a skin care YouTuber has a million followers, but a radical feminist is virtually unknown, something is deeply wrong.
Firestone longed for nothing more than an end to the tyranny of the biological family, and she didn’t shy away from naming the biggest problem of all:
“The heart of woman’s oppression is her child-bearing and child-rearing role.”
While all self-proclaimed feminists acknowledge that motherhood burdens and sets women back in many ways, their approaches to solutions couldn’t be more different. Unfortunately, many of today’s pseudo-feminists believe that simply improving the conditions of motherhood is enough. Firestone, however, had a perfectly clear vision: one should, of course, completely reject the pregnancy and birth project, thus killing a hundred birds with one stone!
What would be truly feminist is to apply the Lysistrata principle, which seems to partly inspire the young Korean women of the 4-B-movement, and to motivate men through consistent sexual abstinence to a) end a war, as in Aristophanes‘ comedy, b) create a world in which it is also enjoyable to live as a woman, or c) save the environment by any means necessary.
But as long as the majority of women voluntarily allow themselves to become pregnant, even though the world is neither politically nor ecologically a pleasant place, one can, of course, not achieve much as a single individual.
Firestone refers to children as ego extensions and laments the general inability of the left to see the ecological population problem — even though at that time the world population was less than half its current size: 3.7 billion! In this context, it is worth recalling the I-PAT formula, according to which impact is composed of the parameters population (P), wealth (A) and technology (T) – a fact that is persistently ignored by many journalists and the majority of the population.
According to Firestone, giving birth is „like shitting a pumpkin“, and it’s refreshing to read that someone in 1970 already found such explicit words and wasn’t too cowardly to explicitly point out the barbaric, bestial nature of pregnancy and childbirth. Even in Firestone’s time, however, it was dangerous to speak out so openly against motherhood. Only by adding that one was neurotic or hated children could one potentially get away with it, she stated in 1970 — and it’s simply heartbreaking to realise that the situation is still similar in 2026.
For Firestone and me, it’s about liberating women from the tyranny of reproduction, about protecting their bodies, minds, souls, and finances, and not compromising all of that to do patriarchy the greatest possible favour. Firestone rightly describes pregnancy as „clumsy, inefficient, and painful.“
Anthropocentrism is a bad habit that can be attributed to most philosophers, but also to most ordinary people, and which has catastrophic consequences for animals and plants. If one isn’t going to show interest in them for their own sake, one should at least be wise enough to recognise that the destruction of ecosystems has disastrous consequences for those oh-so-wonderful humans.
Someone should explain to the reactionary ignoramuses that it’s not me who enjoys provoking, but rather that considerate people who like to think feel provoked by those who still consider 2026 a suitable year to produce a new human being. That is crazy, not the warning against a project that offers nothing but disadvantages for all involved (apart from a few advantages for the owners of the respective mini-me).
The idea that we don’t run towards death, but rather flee the catastrophe of birth, is a truth expressed in one form or another by other great philosophers, from Montaigne to Schopenhauer.
Luckily, we have a choice. As soon as you are in the world, you are in chains in one way or even several. Let us learn from a great philosopher and avoid imposing burdens on women and innocent bystanders!
Verena Brunschweiger is an author, childfree activist, and feminist whose 2019 manifesto caused an international stir. She writes on environmentalism, feminism and philosophy.
https://independentaustralia.net/profile-on/verena-brunschweiger,1668
