Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm

Dados Bibliográficos

ID23328166
AutoresSeana Valentine Shiffrin (0000-0002-9855-8189, University of California, Los Angeles, autor correspondente)
Ano1999
Volume5
Fascículo2
Páginas117-148
Data de publicação1999-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLegal Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1352-3252 • E-ISSN: 1469-8048
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1352325299052015
OpenAlexW3126143484
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas132

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.

Action (physics) · Damages · Environmental ethics · Harm · Human life · Law and economics · Moral responsibility · Morality · Political science · Sociology · Free Will and Agency · Law · Legal principles and applications · Patient Dignity and Privacy · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology