When is birth unfair to the child

Create Alert Alert. Share This Paper. Background Citations. Methods Citations. Topics from this paper. Preconception Injuries interest. Uterus Mouse. Citation Type. Has PDF. Publication Type. More Filters. Is it wrong to deliberately conceive or give birth to a child with mental retardation? Harming by conceiving: a review of misconceptions and a new analysis.

Is it wrong to bring children who will have serious diseases and disabilities into the world? In particular, is it unfair to them? The notion that existence itself can be an injury is the basis for a recent new tort known as "wrongful life" Steinbock, This paper considers Feinberg's theory of harm as the basis for a claim of wrongful life, and concludes that rarely can the stringent conditions imposed by his analysis be met.

Another basis for maintaining that it is morally wrong to have children under extremely adverse conditions is suggested: a principle of parental responsibility.

We also argue that having children under such conditions may be unfair to the children, even if they have not been in Feinberg's sense harmed. Finally, we consider when conditions are sufficiently awful that having children might be viewed as incompatible with being a good parent and unfair to the child.

Disability in Applied Ethics. Torts in Philosophy of Law. Edit this record. Mark as duplicate. Find it on Scholar. Request removal from index. Revision history. Download options PhilArchive copy. From the Publisher via CrossRef no proxy onlinelibrary. Configure custom resolver. Caspar Hare - - Ethics 3 A Life Worth Giving?

However, both life and death are, in crucial respects, awful. Together, they constitute an existential vise—the wretched grip that enforces our predicament. An obvious consequence of anti-natalism taken to the extreme is that the human race will die out, but philosophers such as Benatar see no problem with this.

After all, humans are pretty horrible creatures, and inflict endless amounts of suffering on themselves and others. The nonidentity problem questions the morality of causing someone to exist, but doing so under flawed circumstances so that they will suffer more than if another child were born instead. These philosophical arguments may be logical, but they result in extreme conclusions, and seem unlikely to be applied by many potential parents evaluating their life decisions.

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