The former text addresses one of the most common arguments against ‘Wrongful Life’ claims.
If you haven’t read it yet, it is recommended (though not necessary) to do so before reading this one. This text addresses another common argument against ‘Wrongful Life’ claims, that is that they disvalue the life of people with disabilities.

Just a quick reminder, a ‘Wrongful Life’ case is when a child sues for medical negligence a doctor or hospital for failing to diagnose and/or for not informing the child’s parents about a genetic disorder or foetal impairment when abortion was still an option and would have been chosen by the parents had they been informed. The claim in a wrongful-life suit is not that the negligence of the doctor was the cause of the impairment, but that by failing to inform the parents, the doctor is responsible for the birth of an impaired child who otherwise would not have been born and therefore would not have experienced the suffering caused by the impairment. The lawsuit is in respect of the damage caused by the impairment, this would generally include pain, suffering, and ‘disability costs’—the extra financial costs attributable to the disability, such as the cost of nursing care.

One of the main and most important arguments against ‘Wrongful Life’ claims is that they disvalue the life of people with disabilities (which their main problem is not the disability but the inaccessibility, meaning their disability is socially constructed according to the claimers), and that it promotes ableism. However, there is no logical reason for ‘Wrongful Life’ claims to promote ableism. There is no causal link between discriminatively denying people with disabilities from any social benefit and thinking that disabilities should be prevented before people who are forced to endure them are created. And the logic behind this argument is that people prefer to be healthy and not to endure disabilities, a claim which doesn’t by any means imply that once people with disabilities are created they should be discriminated against. If anything, it is the other way around, as this stand expresses a very high sensitivity to the plight of living with disabilities, and therefore asserts that it must be prevented beforehand, it doesn’t imply that it should be discriminated against or ignored once it did occur.

There is no contradiction between thinking that it is better that people with severe disabilities will not be created and that once people with severe disabilities are created they must be treated equally to any other person. There is no reason to infer one assertion from the other. As an antinatalist obviously I am against the creation of any person, however I am in favor of providing each person with the best possible life once created. To treat people with disabilities differently is to victimize them twice. Not only had they been forced to endure severe disabilities, they are also forced to endure discrimination?!

It is totally plausible to think that we must do everything we can to avoid something before it happens and at the same time think that once it did happen, we must do everything we can to make it better. In fact, the main reason most of the people who think that the specific situation in the center of this text must be avoided is that the people forced into it are highly vulnerable. And there is no logic in ignoring their vulnerability and need of assistance once they are created, since the whole point is to prevent harms. Denying them assistance by promoting ableism is to increase harm. There is perfect sense in my view that antinatalists, despite thinking that all procreation regardless of any disability is wrong, would think and promote accessibility for all disabilities. And that is because both positions are about minimizing the harms bound with existence. The best thing is to prevent them of course, but to minimize them surly is better than to ignore them.

Obviously discrimination against persons with disabilities is always wrong, but associating disability with harm and rendering disability a problem, isn’t. It is not that disabilities shouldn’t be associated with harm and rendered a problem, but that they are harms and a problem, and one that at least in ‘Wrongful Life’ cases could have been easily avoided, and avoiding it is desirable when possible.

If there is a situation that no one would have freely chosen, then it means that it is undesirable. If no one would have chosen a disability over not having one, then it means that a disability is not preferable, but something that people need to learn to live with. Disabilities might be cope-able but they are not desirable. People are forced to cope with them, and they wouldn’t have, had they never existed. That is the claim, not that every existing person with disabilities must stop exiting.
No one is claiming that people with disabilities shouldn’t be assisted once they exist, but that it is better to avoid problems instead of struggling with them when there is no harm in that avoidance. And no one is harmed by a life that no one had lived.

Being forced to live with disabilities is an undesired situation which can be very painful, limiting and frustrating, how is that not a harm? And actually, once disabilities are associated with harm, it’s much more reasonable to enhance accessibility, not to promote ableism. It makes more sense that if there is no harm or a problem with disabilities then the world shouldn’t be made more accessible. It must be made more accessible, exactly because disabilities are a problem.

Obviously there is a lot of truth in the claim that the problem is social, economic, physical, and of attitudinal barriers. However, even if the whole world would become highly accessible, it won’t solve many of the structural problems of people with severe disabilities. No elevator, ramp or accessible pedestrian signals can solve chronic pain and all pendency.

Some of the opposers to ‘Wrongful Life’ suites do accept that some cases of people with disabilities can be considered as ‘Wrongful Life’, however, they refuse to argue on their behalf and remain opposers of all cases, so not to run the risk of drawing lines in the sand regarding the status of the various disabilities. But by refusing to explicitly accept at least some cases of disability so there would be no precedent, these people are sacrificing some of the most miserable people in the world. To not offend people with disabilities (an offense that shouldn’t be taken as it is not really an offense in the first place), some people insist that even in cases of medical negligence in which had the parents been informed about the expected impairment they would have chosen to have an abortion, no one should be compensated.

It is very frustrating, cruel, and highly alarming in relation to antinatalism, that humanity is still not almost unanimous regarding conditions such as TaySachs disease, spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease, hemophilia, Down’s syndrome, muscular dystrophy, severe mental retardation, severe neurological diseases, severe paralyzation, and many other conditions which breaking barriers could never save.

I agree that once people with disabilities exist, making their lives as tolerable as possible despite their disabilities is necessary, but that doesn’t mean that living with disabilities is necessary.
And it is definitely not necessary or justified to keep creating people with disabilities claiming that the problem is not with them but with the world. If the world is wrong, it is wrong to force someone into it. And that goes for all people, because the world is not only wrong for people with disabilities, but for all of them.
If anything, ‘the problem is the world’ argument should cause people to try and fix it first and only afterwards add more people into it. How can a fucked up world serve as a justification for status quo?!

There are numerous problems that need fixing before breeding, any breeding, not only of those expected to be forced with ‘wrongful lives’. For example, curing every known disease, certainly the hard ones, preventing all the pains, all the wars, all the rapes, all the accidents, all racism, all misogyny, all humiliations, all frustrations, all the boredom, all the loneliness, all the despair, all the deaths and etc.
Another problem that must be fixed beforehand is the pointlessness. What exactly is the purpose of life? What would parents answer to their child if they are asked that question? How are they supposed to answer a child who understands that life is purposeless? These cases are still rare but they are more frequent nowadays. More and more people understand that life has no cosmic meaning or purpose and that they must invent one for themselves. But doesn’t it make more sense to figure out the purpose of an action before performing it? Let alone for someone else?! Isn’t it extremely unfair to throw people into a purposeless life for them to figure it out?

According to the logic of the claim that the problem is with the world and that is where ‘wrongful life’ cases should aim their blame, given that death is a problem for most of the living, shouldn’t this unsolvable problem be solved before creating more life?

Separation anxiety is a very serious problem that is rarely treated proportionally only because it is so common and almost unavoidable, let alone in the western world. So doesn’t it make more sense to solve the problem of maternity leave before deciding to force separation anxiety on another person? As, if children start suing their parents for the harm of separation anxiety, the opposers to ‘wrongful life’ cases are supposed to argue that the problem is social and that society must be altered in a way that at least one parent, would be with the child all the time, at least until the age of three. Obviously that is practically delusional.
The logic behind the claim that all the problems are social is that everything must change, except people’s desire to procreate of course. That is despite that even the things that are changeable are not very likely to change, and many are not changeable. Pain, frustration, regret, boredom, weariness, worthlessness, disappointment, death and etc., are unavoidable problems of life. They also must be solved before creating more of it, only that they are unsolvable.

Everyone is either born with disabilities (physical, social, mental or emotional) or would personally experience them at least to some extent later in life, therefore everyone is harmed by being created. People who are born with severe disabilities are, at least statistically, in a worse and more vulnerable position. Life of misery in their case is much more probable. But life of misery is always probable, regardless of severe congenital impairments. So the argument against procreation is stronger in their case for that matter, but it ain’t fundamentally different.

And the argument against procreation is not only about the probability of misery for the person created, but also, and in my view mostly, about the certainty of misery for the ones whom the created person would harm during its life. Every created person is not only in risk of being miserable but is first and foremost in certitude of making others miserable. Every created person is responsible for the creation of many wrongful lives and therefore every life is wrong.

For us antinatalists, this argument is supposedly marginal as we don’t exclude ‘wrongful life’ cases from others. However, it shouldn’t be marginal, as it is a very strong indication of how far we are from the general public who don’t yet agree to prevent even cases of people with severe impairments who claim that their own lives are wrongful. So clearly, there is no chance that the general public would ever be convinced about all of them.

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