Is it good to be alive? Is it better to be alive than not alive?
I’m not asking whether someone is, at this moment, better off dead, having lived some amount of time, rather than alive. Rather, I’m asking whether it’s better that someone never came to exist at all.
Obviously, that question is central to the plot of It’s a Wonderful Life, in which George Bailey learns that he has a pretty good life, and that it’s better that he was born than not born. But, like so many things in this unprecedented historical moment we’re all living through together, this existential question has salience for real life, not just the silver screen.
I’m talking about “wrongful birth” and “wrongful life” lawsuits. (The former are filed by parents; the latter are filed by the child.) The basic logic of such suits is that the plaintiff, because of his diminished quality of life due to some sort of physical or mental defect, is owed compensation for his suffering because said suffering was preventable, viz., by him not existing at all.
I’m not making this up.
Back in 2013, a wrongful-birth lawsuit resulted in a jury award of $50 million to a couple whose son was born with severe mental and physical disabilities. And just last year, a U.K. court awarded millions of dollars to a then-20-year-old girl, Evie, with spina bifida, who alleged that, had the medic told her mom that she needed to take folic acid to minimize the risk of spina bifida affecting her baby, she would have put off conception—which in turn would have meant Evie would never have been born.
Even though such suits are in all likelihood uncommon (I confess to not having extensively surveyed court filings; sue me), even one is too many.
Most people instinctively intuit that life is generally good and something to be cherished. In fact, we’re concerned for people who don’t think that; it’s why suicide hotlines exist. Written on our souls is the (nearly) unshakeable conviction that life is good and worth living, even amidst various trials, difficulties, challenges, and suffering.
But these lawsuits send a very powerful, very different, and very bad message. They scream, loudly, backed by millions and millions of dollars, that non-existence is better than existence, that this person never should have been part of our world just because they’re dependent, perhaps in pain, and don’t fit the mold.
It’s hard to overstate how perverse these legal causes of action are; they cut to the heart of the human sacredness, which is grounded on our creation by God in His image and likeness. A wrongful-birth action requires a person’s parents to say that they would rather their own child not have been born. The people who loved you first, who gave you the capacity for love by first giving you life, and who love you most, stand up in open court and say, under oath, that you’re a burden and that it would have been better if you didn’t exist—but they’ll take some money as a second-best result.
That person’s physical and mental suffering, as if it weren’t hard enough to bear on its own, is compounded by their emotional and spiritual anguish at being unwanted but nonetheless begrudgingly tolerated in exchange for cash.
And then, on the wrongful life side, a person comes to be so defined by their suffering that they will stand up in open court and say about themselves, under oath, that they so loathe themselves and their condition that they would prefer never to have been given life—but, again, they’ll take some money as a second-best result.
Rather than embracing whatever good their life makes possible, even though they’re not perfectly healthy (but who among us is?), they nihilistically insist that nothing, not even their own life—which is the necessary precondition of experiencing anything at all, good or bad—is worth anything (except, strangely, whatever value they think the money judgment will provide them).
How sad. How tragic.
As of 2020, a little over half the states recognized wrongful-birth claims, and about a quarter of states prohibited them; more hopefully, only a few jurisdictions in the United States allow wrongful-life lawsuits.
I think one concrete way that we might create a more humane society is by repealing laws that allow for wrongful-birth and wrongful-life causes of action, on the basis that they strike at the root of human dignity. And why not?
Do we not believe that life is worth living? That it’s better for people to exist rather than not—and these people, not some others? That it’s morally perverse to put a price tag on someone’s suffering, with monetary compensation predicated on getting them or their parents to admit that they hate their life so much they’d rather never have been gifted it?
I guess I’m not so sure what we think about those questions, at least in a specific, empirically verifiable way. But sometimes, thinking/feeling follows action. That is, we become what we do—in some circumstances, we act ourselves into right thinking/feeling.
So, let’s act like a society that values human life, that we might truly become one.
An excellent article, Deion, and well timed. Obviously the repeal of Roe and Casey is a critical thing (prayers for Special K), as are laws prohibitting abortion. But in order truly to mend our culture we must think creatively, and your suggestion here seems like a good place to build from. Such a move would establish necessary first principles: that human life is worth living, that parents should love and want their children, that doctors exist for the sake of life and not to prevent it, and that disability is neither an impediment to a meaningful life nor a justification for the devaluing of that life. A legislative move like the one you suggest says nothing at all about abortion, yet in a lot of ways it moves past the symptom to attack the underlying disease itself. Very well done.
Thanks for opening our eyes to this demented phenomenon, Deion. A new wrinkle for you: climate change dogma informs us that we humans are all loathsome burdens on Mother Earth -- that nature and the universe would be better off had we never existed. The upside: we may all therefore have grounds to sue...somebody? Jeesh.