ABSTRACT
Law is more than an exercise in logic, and logical analysis, although essential to a system of ordered justice, should not become an instrument of injustice. This chapter discusses the issue of prenatal harm in the context of reproductive technologies as a philosophical problem and then explores what implications the analysis may have for the discussions about wrongful life and wrongful birth litigation. A further complication for the application of the non-identity problem to reproductive matters occurs in the context of assisted reproductive technologies when an embryo has already been created ex utero. From the point of view of an orthodox Parfitian analysis of the non-identity problem, current UK jurisprudence disallowing wrongful birth cases is, however, paradoxically correct. A recurrent question in discussions about new reproductive technologies as applied to human reproduction is to what extent the welfare of the child who is the result of the process should count in the moral or legal analysis of the situation.
