The Morality of Knowingly Conceiving Children with Serious Conditions: An Expanded “Wrongful Life” Standard

Abstract

The notion that it could be wrong to have a child seems strange to us, for it challenges many of our basic beliefs about the significance of procreation. Children are gifts of God whom we count as a blessing. As we gain greater control over our powers of reproduction and learn more than ever before about children whom we could bring into the world, however, the question of whether we ought to “produce a man” pushes its way to the fore. By isolating our genes and detecting their connections with certain diseases, we can predict with varying degrees of certainty whether our offspring will be affected by specific genetic conditions. And by merging sperm and egg in a glass dish, we can examine the resulting preembryo before implantation and learn whether it bears a deleterious condition of concern. Thus, prospective parents today face agonizing decisions about whether to conceive children or whether to avoid conception for the sake of children whom they will never know. They are caught in a conflict between the desire and call to have a child and the troubling thought that they might give a life to a child that could be viewed as “wrongful.” The notion that it could be wrong to have a child startles us and creates difficult new ethical and theological questions.

Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have produced a man with the help of the Lord” (Genesis 4:1).