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In December 1941, Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman living in Amsterdam, found herself unexpectedly pregnant.
1941年12月，居住在阿姆斯特丹的年轻犹太女子埃蒂·希勒斯姆发现自己意外怀孕了。
Hers was not a wanted pregnancy; we know from her diaries that she had never desired children, and had even considered a hysterectomy “in a rash and pleasure-loving moment.”
她并不想怀孕，从她的日记中我们可以知道，她从来都不想要孩子，甚至 “在轻率和贪图享乐的时候”考虑过切除子宫。
Like many women before (and after) her, Hillesum self-managed her abortion. She left behind an account not just of her methods, but of her reasoning.
和在她之前（以及之后）的许多女性一样，希勒斯姆自行堕胎。她留下了一份自述，其中不仅描述了她的堕胎方法，也阐述了她对堕胎的思考。
“All I want is to keep someone out of this miserable world. I shall leave you in a state of unbornness, rudimentary being that you are, and you ought to be grateful to me. I almost feel a little tenderness for you,” she wrote.
“我只想让某人远离这个悲惨的世界。我会让你处于现在的未出生、未发育完全的状态，你应该感激我。我对你几乎产生了一丝柔情。”她写道。
Hillesum was aware of the dire political circumstances around her, but her rationale was entirely personal. As she explained to the entity growing within her, her “tainted family” was “riddled with hereditary disease.”
赫列斯姆意识到了她周围可怕的政治环境，但她的理由完全是个人的。她向自己体内正在成长的实体解释说，她那“有污点的家族充满了遗传病”。
Eighty-three years later, the Dutch philosopher Mara van der Lugt looks to Hillesum in contemplating a central question she believes that everyone must attempt to answer for themselves: that of whether or not to have children.
83年后，荷兰哲学家玛拉·范德卢格特在思考一个核心问题时，将目光投向了希勒斯姆。她认为，每个人都必须尝试自己回答这个问题：是否要孩子。
In her new book, Begetting: What Does It Mean to Create a Child? van der Lugt locates in Hillesum’s words no less than “the beginning of an ethics of creation,” an earnest wrestling with the act of bringing a new person into the world.
在她的新书《生育：创造一个孩子意味着什么？》中，范德卢格特在赫勒瑟姆的话语中发现的就是“创造伦理学的开端”，这是对将一个新生命带入世界这一行为的认真思考。
She argues that childbearing is too often framed as a matter of desire and capacity—wanting or not wanting children, being able or unable to have them—when it should be a moral one.
她认为，生育问题往往被描述为是关于愿望和能力的问题——想要或不想要孩子，能够或不能够要孩子——而实际上它应该是一个道德问题。
Asking such a question in an era when two-thirds of the global population live in places with fertility rates below replacement level may seem counterintuitive (and to pronatalist policymakers, downright counterproductive).
现在全球三分之二的人口都生活在生育率低于自然更替水平的地方，在这个时代提出这样的问题似乎违反直觉(对鼓励生育的政策制定者来说，提出这个问题也只会起到反作用)。
Clearly, many people of reproductive age have decided against parenthood, even though it is still the far more common path. But van der Lugt is less interested in the outcomes, and even in the reasons people give for having or not having children, than in the question itself.
显然，许多育龄人已经决定不做父母，尽管生育子女仍然是更普遍的选择。但是范德卢格特对结果不太感兴趣，甚至对人们要孩子或不要孩子的原因也不太感兴趣，她更感兴趣的是这个问题本身。
At the core of her argument are two facts: First, that a person cannot consent to being born, and second, that there is a high likelihood they will experience at least some suffering in their lifetime.
她的论证中有两个核心事实：第一，一个人无法同意自己的出生，第二，他们一生中至少会经历一些痛苦的可能性很高。
These two facts, van der Lugt maintains, should be sufficient to trouble common assumptions about begetting — chief among them the notion that having children is inherently good.
范德卢格特认为，这两个事实足以动摇人们对生育的普遍假设，其中最主要的是生儿育女本来就是好事的观念。
She wants her readers to reconsider the language people use about childbearing, which usually revolves around choice or preferences.
她希望读者重新审视人们用于描述生育的语言，这些语言通常围绕着选择或偏好。
Instead, she argues, begetting “should be seen as an act of creation, a cosmic intervention, something great, and wondrous — and terrible”: Hardly something one should undertake without pausing to examine why.
相反，她认为，生育“应被视为一种创造行为、一种无比重大的干预、一件伟大、奇妙、而又可怕的事情”：绝不是一件无需停下来思考原因就可以做的事情。
