In December 1941, Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman living in Amsterdam, found herself unexpectedly pregnant.[qh]

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。[qh]

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.” [qh]

从她的日记中我们可以知道，她从未想过要孩子，甚至 "在轻率和贪图享乐的时候 "考虑过切除子宫。[qh]

Hillesum wanted above all to be a writer.[qh]

赫勒瑟姆最想要成为一名作家。[qh]

Like many women before (and after) her, Hillesum self-managed her abortion; she mentions swallowing “twenty quinine pills” and assaulting herself with “hot water and blood-curdling instruments.”[qh]

和她之前（和之后）的许多女性一样，希勒斯姆自行堕胎；她提到自己吞下了“二十颗奎宁丸”，并用“热水和令人毛骨悚然的器械”伤害自己。[qh]

She left behind an account not just of her methods, but of her reasoning.[qh]

她留下的不仅是她的方法，还有她的想法。[qh]

“All I want is to keep someone out of this miserable world.[qh]

我所想要的，就是让某人远离这个悲惨的世界。[qh]

I shall leave you in a state of unbornness, rudimentary being that you are, and you ought to be grateful to me.[qh]

我会让你处于未出生的状态，你就是个初级生物，你应该感激我。[qh]

I almost feel a little tenderness for you,” she wrote.[qh]

我对你几乎产生了一丝柔情，”她写道。[qh]

Hillesum was aware of the dire political circumstances around her, but her rationale was entirely personal.[qh]

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。[qh]

As she explained to the entity growing within her, her “tainted family” was “riddled with hereditary disease.” [qh]

她向自己体内正在成长的生命解释说，她的“污点家族”“充满了遗传疾病”。[qh]

She swore that “no such unhappy human being would ever spring from my womb.” [qh]

她发誓说：“我的子宫绝不能孕育出这样不幸的人。”[qh]

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.[qh]

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。[qh]

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.[qh]

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了“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。[qh]

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.[qh]

她认为，生育问题往往被定义为一个关于愿望和能力的问题——想要或不想要孩子，能够或不能够生孩子——而实际上它应该是一个道德问题。[qh]

Procreation, she proposes, is a “problem—a personal, ethical and philosophical problem, especially in a secular age.” [qh]

生育，她提出，是一个“问题——一个个人的、伦理的和哲学的问题，尤其在一个世俗的时代。”[qh]

Perhaps, she ventures, it is “the greatest philosophical problem of our time.” [qh]

也许，她大胆地说，这是“我们这个时代最大的哲学问题”。[qh]

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 policy makers, downright counterproductive).[qh]

在一个全球三分之二人口生活在生育率低于更替水平的地方的时代，提出这样的问题似乎违反直觉(对奉行鼓励生育的政策制定者来说，这完全适得其反)。[qh]

Clearly, many people of reproductive age have decided against parenthood, even though it is still the far more common path.[qh]

显然，许多育龄人已经决定不做父母，尽管这仍然是更普遍的选择。[qh]

(Decades after contraception was legalized for unmarried people in the U.S., more than 84 percent of women in their 40s had given birth.) [qh]

在美国，未婚人士的避孕合法化几十年后，超过84%的40多岁女性已经生育。[qh]

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.[qh]

但是范德卢格特对这一结果不太感兴趣，甚至对人们要孩子或不要孩子的原因也不太感兴趣，他更感兴趣的是这个问题本身。[qh]

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.[qh]

她的论证核心有两个事实：第一，一个人无法决定自己的出生，第二，他们一生中至少会经历一些痛苦的可能性很高。[qh]

As incontrovertible as these assertions are, I’ve rarely heard people outside of environmentalist circles talk about their hypothetical children in these terms.[qh]

尽管这些论断无可争议，但我很少听到环保圈之外的人用这些术语谈论他们假设的孩子。[qh]

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.[qh]

范德卢格特认为，这两个事实足以颠覆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。[qh]

She wants her readers to reconsider the language people use about childbearing, which usually revolves around choice or preferences.[qh]

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。[qh]

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.[qh]

相反，她认为，生育“应被视为一种创造行为、一种宇宙干预、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承担的事情。[qh]