Under what conditions can a child say to his mother that she has made a mistake in letting him be born?
RISKY PREGNANCIES
Two women are both looking forward to having a child.
1 The first is already three months pregnant when the doctor tells her one piece of good news and one piece of bad. The bad news is that the fetus she is carrying has a defect, which, even if it is not so grave as to render the child’s life wretched or not worth living, will greatly diminish its quality of life. The good news is that this defect can be easily treated. All the mother has to do is to take a pill without side effects and the child will avoid his handicap.
The second woman sees her doctor before becoming pregnant, and when she is just about to stop all contraception. In this case too the doctor tells her one piece of good news and one piece of bad. The bad news is that because of the state of her health, if she conceives this child in the next three months, he will have a significant handicap that will have the same impact on the child’s quality of life as in the previous case. This handicap cannot be treated. But the good news is that the woman’s pathology is temporary. If she waits three months before getting pregnant, her child will avoid the handicap.
Let us suppose that the first woman forgets to take her pill and that the second does not wait to get pregnant, which means that the two children are born with precisely the same serious handicap.
Are the moral implications identical? This is by no means obvious.
The first child can say to his mother: “By not taking the pill, you have wronged me. My life would be better if you had taken the pill”
But the second child cannot say: “By not waiting three months before becoming pregnant, you have wronged me. My life would be better if you had waited.”
If he cannot say it, it is quite simply because, had his mother waited, he would not have been born at all!
Is a life with a grave handicap, but not so miserable as to not be worth living, preferable to no life at all?
2