Some theorists have supposed that the child’s neediness is the relevant harm. Making someone needy is, plausibly, harming them in a way that generates a compensatory obligation. When one causes a child to exist, one causes an indi- vidual to be needy since babies and children just are needy. The compensatory obligation, then, is the obligation to rectify the child’s neediness. Causing needi- ness, then, would count as a serious boundary-crossing harm. Alternately, we might suppose that causing existence generates rights that must not be violated. Brake considers Feinberg’s claim that children have a “right to a reasonable assurance of a minimally decent life” (Brake 2010, 159). On this account, causing a child to exist would be a rights violation in the absence of care.
