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Wrongfu Life

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Legal Theory, 5 (1999), 117–148. Printed in the United States of America Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1352–3252/99 $9.50
SEANA VALENTINE SHIFFRIN Wrongful Life

WRONGFUL LIFE, PROCREATIVE RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HARM
Seana Valentine Shiffrin University of California at Los Angeles
I. 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
1. In these cases, the disability is not usually caused by events after conception, such as prenatal damage. Rather, the disability, the underlying genetic condition, or the relevant circumstances of conception are essentially linked to the child’s identity or existence. So, he must claim that his life was wrongfully caused, not only his disability. Jeff McMahan argues that some significant prenatal damage, occurring early in pregnancy, may affect the identity of the child. If he is correct, then such cases should be classified with the cases typically associated with wrongful life litigation. Jeff McMahan, Wrongful Life: Paradoxes in the Morality of Causing People to Exist, in RATIONAL COMMITMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: ESSAYS FOR GREGORY KAVKA 208–47 (J. Coleman & C. Morris eds., 1998). 2. Usually these suits are brought on behalf of children and allege that their parents’ doctors were at fault for failing to inform the parents of a likely defect (knowledge of which would have forestalled creation), failing to prescribe effective contraception, or failing to perform an abortion properly. Cf. Lori Andrews, Legal

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