Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm

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.