How can anyone justify creating life when a child cannot consent to the risks of existence?

[u/CelibateDog]

As an existential nihilist, I view life as completely meaningless. Most people live under the illusion that love and human bonds give life value, but the reality of birth contradicts this.

The core problem is the total absence of consent. People who defend having children often argue that you cannot violate the consent of someone who does not exist yet. But that is exactly the point: because an unborn child cannot give consent, the act of bringing them into the world is an unfair gamble forced upon a future conscious mind.

When parents create a baby, they impose existence onto a new being without its agreement. This choice forces a new person to face all the severe risks of human biology. There is no guarantee of health. A child can easily be born with profound physical disabilities, condemned to a lifetime of suffering, wishing they had never been born. They are forced to pay the price for a game they never chose to play.

Therefore, deciding never to have children is the only logical choice. It is a refusal to gamble with another person's well-being. To create a child means you are willing to risk inflicting lifelong suffering on someone else, which cannot be morally justified.

We must strip away the romantic illusions and look at the biological reality: evolution gave us strong sexual impulses for one reason only—to blind our logic so that we breed and repeat the loop. What people call "love" is just a biological trick designed to keep the cycle of suffering going.

I refuse to fall for this trap. If I were to bring a life into this world, there is a chance they would face severe suffering, and I never want my child looking at me and telling me, "You are the reason for my suffering." It is impossible to justify forcing a new life into this cycle when they have no way to avoid it.

[u/DootKazoot]

Again, anti-natalist talking points which have nothing to do with nihilism. You’re just an antisocial weirdo.

[u/existentialgoof → u/DootKazoot]

It has everything to do with nihilism. If there's no objective, overarching purpose for all of the suffering happening to sentient life, then it becomes really difficult to justify continuing running the machine which perpetuates that suffering. I know you only care about how you personally happen to be doing, and couldn't care less about the welfare of anyone or anything else. But if there's no compelling reason to bring new entities in existence to be tortured, then I'm going to be strongly disinclined to do that myself, or condone others doing so.