A life worth starting and a life worth continuing are two very different things. The claim that, if procreation is allowed, the resulting offspring would want to continue to live, ignores some obvious inconsistencies. The most glaring would be that the infant offspring cannot, in any meaningful way, express consent or dissatisfaction with human life. It simply does not have the capacity to conceptualize its entire being. It is in this vulnerable stage that conscious interests alongside powerful self-conscious interests develop as the offspring matures. The choice is never given to the offspring in a state wherein they are unclouded by psycho-biological dispositions beyond their control.

The infant survives despite an ongoing ignorance of what lies ahead. Suffering is inherent in sentient life, but the severity, frequency and duration remain unknown until they inevitably are. All is ultimately lost in the offspring’s death – a reality of which both parent and offspring are notionally aware. The conscious and self-conscious interests of the offspring are annihilated which is not only bad for the offspring but causes the suffering of those close to them.

In the state where the offspring did not exist, there would be zero pleasures, but this means there would be zero pains. One might say, the pleasures are worth the pains, but in the case of nonexistence, one would have to ask, worth it for whom? The nonexistent have zero desires or needs for pleasure and thus do not experience deprivation of any kind. Surely consenting or not consenting to existence should consider the good of never wanting for anything. Maybe non-existence makes this obvious without needing consent.

Trial software is like existence. One receives one month free; one develops an addiction to it and is now paying a subscription fee. With software, you can always opt out from the subscription and survive, but with existence, opting out is impossible (unless life is so unbearable, euthanasia is warranted). This approaches sunk-cost reasoning only to be guaranteed to lose everything eventually.

“Beauty” for example, is often said to be self justifying in bringing a new being into existence. But we’re creating a need for beauty – which often doesn’t show its face – where there was none. In an absurd way, we’re stating “beauty exists and it needs people,” not “people that exist need beauty.” Added to the desire for beauty – a deprivation in and of itself – there is suffering of all kinds. We have a deontological duty to avoid suffering more than we do to create people that experience beauty. According to several psychological studies, we misjudge how happy our lives actually are but see “beauty” in them – perhaps we’re forced to.

To be clear, the choice is not whether to carry out suicide or not, it is whether the offspring would have preferred to continue to exist or not exist to begin with. Suicide entails losing the life the offspring is already entrenched in and adds an emotional dimension to the question that is unhelpful. While some do carry out suicide due to unbearable circumstances, once the offspring is here, the need for existence is created by existence itself.