‘Wrongful conception’ is a wrongful conception
by Michael Cook, MercatorNet:
A young woman has won a lawsuit on the basis that it would have been better if she had never been born.
“It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.”
This nihilistic nugget comes from one of my favourite contemporary philosophers, David Benatar, a South African who teaches at the University of Cape Town. It establishes a bookend to human life. There is a right to die at the end of our days and a right not to be born at the beginning.
Unlike Prof B, most people, most decent people, regard such cosmic pessimism as a kind of blasphemy against the kaleidoscopic beauty of human life.
However, the law in the United Kingdom appears to be siding with Prof B at the moment, in the wake of a case decided in the High Court last week, Evie Toombes v Dr M.
Judge Rosalind Coe QC ruled that a 20-year-old disabled woman who aspires to be a Paralympic showjumper has won the right to sue for millions in damages. Her mother’s doctor failed to advise her to take folic acid supplements before Evie’s conception in 2001.
This was a case, the judge ruled, not of wrongful birth, nor of wrongful life, but of wrongful conception.
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