On the morning of Saturday, May 17, a bomb went off outside the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California. The bomber, a twenty-five-year-old man named Guy Edward Bartkus, was killed in the blast. Four other people were injured.

News outlets soon began reporting that Bartkus subscribed to something called “anti-natalism.” In the “manifesto” he posted online before carrying out his hateful deed, Bartkus bemoaned the fact that he had not consented to being born. There are many others who share his views. A Reddit thread devoted to “efilism” was shut down after the bombing. “Efilism” is a “pro-mortalist,” or “anti-natalist,” ideology— the name comes from “life” spelled backwards. Anti-natalism, pro-mortalism, efilism—the media covered the attack as though Bartkus’s way of thinking were a new development. The New York Times called his views “fringe.”

Anti-natalism as a defined set of propositions is, on some readings, new. Various  sources cite a 2006 essay, titled (in English gloss) “The Art of Guillotining the Procreators: Anti-Natalist Manifesto,” by the Belgian philosopher and activist Théophile de Giraud as the departure point for today’s discussions about the subject. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy details current notions of anti-natalism as largely stemming from the work of Robert Benatar, a South African philosopher whose 2006 book, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence, has sparked nearly two decades of Anglophone debate about whether it is better to live or not to live. If the latter, then, as some philosophers contend in the wake of Benatar’s argument, it would be better to kill not only oneself  but everyone else, too.

However, anti-natalism seems to me to be much simpler and older than many present-day thinkers would allow. Some trace the pedigree back to negative utilitarianism, a term coined by Karl Popper in his 1952 book The Open Society and Its Enemies. The notion of “negative utilitarianism” itself clearly hearkens back to the work of Jeremy Bentham, who introduced the utilitarian idea in the latter part of the eighteenth century. It is also, however, as some sources note, not too different from the basic premises of Buddhism. And we shouldn’t forget that the Manicheans were against procreation. Their enemy (and erstwhile member) St. Augustine also had complicated views on the subject . Other Christians have distorted doctrines of sin and damnation to argue that it would be better not to have children. The abovementioned Théophile de Giraud released a book in 2021 arguing that early Christianity was an anti-natalist movement. But there seems no need to pin anti-natalism on a particular creed or school of thought. The notion that life would be easier if I, or someone else, did not exist, is, at bottom, a product of fallen human nature. However one splits hairs about anti-natalism or pro-mortalism or efilism, the fact remains that Person A wants to do away with Person A, or Person B, or everyone on earth. This is murder plain and simple. It is as old as the human race.

And if anti-natalism is not new, it is also not “fringe.” The idea that babies should not be born is not a philosophy to which just a handful of misfits in the far-off corners of the dark web subscribe. It is the very business model of Planned Parenthood, a corporate giant that has spent decades garnering support, and money, at the highest levels of the American political, academic, and media establishments.

If we are going to have a public debate about anti-natalism (or pro-mortalism or efilism) then we ought first to be honest about the terms. This ideology is not vintage 2006, not by a long shot. Nor does it attract only social outcasts. Don’t let the media narrative about Guy Edward Bartkus and his crime fool you. The twisted ideology that led Bartkus to blow up a fertility clinic along with himself is at the heart of American thinking about life and death, whether we care to admit it or not.