WRONGFUL LIFE, PROCREATIVE RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HARM

Extract

A wrongful life suit is an unusual civil suit brought by a child (typically a congenitally disabled child)¹ who seeks damages for burdens he suffers that result from his creation. Typically, the child charges that he has been born into an unwanted or miserable life.² These suits offer the prospect of financial relief for some disabled or neglected children and have some theoretical advantages over alternative causes of action.³ But they have had only mixed, mostly negative, success.⁴ They have, however, spurred considerable philosophical interest.⁵ This attention, though, has been primarily focused on issues about the coherence of complaining about one’s existence or its essential conditions. These suits also raise important, but less well-probed, philosophical questions about the morality of procreation and, more generally, about the moral significance of imposed, but not consented to, conditions that deliver both significant harms and benefits.