Reproduction is a gamble because there is no promise or guarantee that the life of the one who is created will be good. It may be good and it may be terrible. That’s why it’s a gamble. And gambling on someone else’s account, on someone else’s life, is morally wrong. This is the case even if the chances of ensuring the created person’s happiness are high because gambling on someone else’s life is wrong in principle. Besides, there is no way to predict someone’s happiness. It is certainly possible to analyze the initial conditions of someone’s life, for example someone born with severe birth defects, to severe poverty, in a war zone, to very young parents; are not comparable to someone born in a welfare state, in a quiet and politically and socially stable area, without any prior detection of defects or genetic tendencies for any diseases, and to healthy, stable parents, with relatively secure financial capabilities. But is it possible to guarantee that the created person will not suffer from depression? Will not be involved in a serious accident that will cause suffering for the rest of her/his life? Won’t go through some traumatic event that will mentally scar her/him for life? Nothing can be guaranteed regarding anyone. Even someone who enjoys high welfare for most of life can, as a result of some event in the last third of life, suffer until death. Life is a continuous risk, therefore creating a person is putting someone else at a continuous risk, and that is morally wrong. People can choose to put themselves at risk (and this shouldn’t be that simple or obvious either because people have loved ones who care about them and fear for their safety so this complete freedom of a person regarding their own destiny is also a bit simplistic), but not others. And as soon as someone is created, the ball is already rolling in the roulette. This someone may fall on depression, exploitation, abuse, bullying, serious illnesses, violence, serious addictions, loneliness, chronic pain, etc., and also on a fairly comfortable life with relatively very little of all of this except for the multitude of negative experiences that are simply unavoidable in life (in the “best” case “only” pain, disease and death), but no one jumped into the roulette out of their choice and free will being fully aware of all the possible risks. They were all thrown into it. And that is always wrong.
Some people wonder who are we (anti-natalists) to dictate to people about their lives. But the situation is exactly the opposite. Those who reproduce are the ones who decide for others about their lives. We are just drawing their attention to it. They claim that they have the right to reproduce and we have no right to interfere in their lives, while they are the ones who interfere in the lives of others. Moral claims do not impose risks on anyone. They can at most make people think about things and reconsider their steps. On the other hand, creating a person is by definition putting someone else in a state of constant risk.
Even if you are convinced that creating someone is not necessarily bad because there is a chance that that someone’s life will be good, you surely have to agree that in every creation of someone there is a risk. And if there is a risk, and especially in light of the fact that the person who is placed at risk did not agree in advance to take that risk, but it was imposed on that person by others, and that this risk is not necessary since it is clear that no one should exist and no one is forced to reproduce, it is morally wrong to take it.
This argument, which is one of the most common among anti-natalists, does not require a pessimistic view of life. Advocators of this argument do not necessarily think that it is always better not to be born or that life is necessarily bad, but it is enough that there is such a possibility, and such a possibility exists in every case of creating life, in order to conclude that reproduction is always morally wrong. You don’t have to think life is bad to recognize that it is dangerous. Even a mostly good life can turn into hell in a split second. And there is really no way to predict who it will happen to or to prevent it when it already happens. No matter how hard the parents try, they have no way of preventing a situation in which their child will be unhappy. Many dangers lie in wait for people throughout their lives, and many things are far beyond their control. Most parents are convinced that they can protect their children from potential dangers, but this is not the case. Most parents have no idea where the danger will come from, let alone how to prevent it.
Pessimistic people think that life is bad, optimistic people that it is good, realistic and rational people understand that they can be good and can be bad, but it is clear to them that since no one is harmed by a good life that no one has lived, and that everyone who lives a bad life is greatly harmed by it, it is morally wrong to take the risk of possible misery when there is no harm in avoiding it.
There is no risk of harming someone when you don’t reproduce because there is no someone to harm. On the other hand, there is definitely harm when you do reproduce. Whoever is created will be harmed by everything that harms her/him and that harms others. He who is not created will not be harmed by not being created and will not harm anyone else.
At least some of those who are created will lose and no one will lose anything if they are not created.
If there was a 75% chance that your children would suffer greatly if you created them would you still do it? Most likely you wouldn’t. If it was 50%? There’s no real chance either. And if it was 25%? Most likely still not because these are your children and why cause suffering to your children? You can keep going down and it’s still hard to believe that you will agree. Not even on less than 10%, because why would you choose for your children that they suffer? But your children will surely suffer. The question is only how much will they suffer. We don’t usually look at reproduction that way or at life that way, but in life there is certain suffering and so to create someone is to cause certain suffering.
Even if we assume that life is good, even very good, for the great majority of people, it is unlikely that any of you will think that a lottery that divides all new created people into the group of great suffering and the group of great joys, will be morally justified even if the group of great suffering is guaranteed to be a small minority compared to the group of joys that will be the big majority. We do not think it is morally justified that a few would suffer so that the many would enjoy. But since out of all those who are created there will surely be many miserable ones, even if they constitute a relatively small minority, and even if it were true that for all the others life is great pleasure, this is what people choose to do even if not completely consciously when they choose to reproduce. Anyone who reproduces takes a risk that s/he will create misery and gambles that it will not happen to her/him but to someone else. On a general level this is simply cruelty.
On the other hand, the opposite gamble, that is, gambling that people created will be miserable and therefore avoiding creating people, is the safest possible gamble. This will surely prevent any harm, any unhappiness and any regret. It will prevent unhappy people from regretting being created, and it won’t make people who would have been happy had they been created regret not being created because they never existed.
We have no way of knowing whether people will be happy or not, and we have no way of guaranteeing that people will be happy. But we definitely have a way to ensure that people don’t suffer and it’s not to create them.