ABSTRACT

Three state judiciaries in America-California, New York, and Washington-agree that a child can sue a doctor because the doctor harmed the child by not aborting him.2 The child was harmed, argue the state jurists, because it is better never to have been born than to live a life with disability (W, *1037; H, *252).3 Failing to facilitate the abortion, the doctor unjustifi ably takes from the child the good of nonexistence when the alternative is a suffering existence. Taking away the good of non-being in such circumstances is the foundation for a wrongful life tort. The tort is controversial: at least eighteen American states have legislated against the tort. Crucial to appreciate is that a wrongful life tort does not rely on the idea that the doctor is responsible for the disability. This is not the harm. The disabilities involved, such as genetic deafness (H, *262), are not in the power of the doctor to change. What is in the doctor’s power is nonexistence rather than existence:4 put differently, as one commentator has it, the tort includes abortion in its defi nition (W, *1035). It is also important to distinguish a wrongful life tort from a related tort. A wrongful birth tort purports a harm for which a doctor can be liable if she somehow removes a woman’s choice of an abortion as a solution to her child’s disability (W, *1027). In this tort the harm is the denial of a choice to abort; in wrongful life tort the harm is the failure to abort.