> In a related discussion, someone argued that keeping up industrial farming is just, because if we stopped doing so all the cattle that wouldn’t been born would be worse off for never being alive, even if their existence was suffering, because suffering is better than not being at all. I firmly believe this is just wrong. Before a being gains consciousness, it’s not a being and doesn’t experience, hence by avoiding their conception we also avoid unnecessary suffering.
You bring up an interesting argument, but I think there is some nuance here. I am not arguing that we have an obligation to propagate human life for the sake of propagating human life; I just think there is a risk of devaluing existing human life by claiming it ought not to have existed in the first place.
There are limitations here. e.g. if one is offended at the claim that Down Syndrome is something to be cured, it may be that one is placing too much emphasis on identifying the expression of an individual’s genes with the individual himself (so e.g. eliminating the extra chromosome is not analogous to eliminating the person himself). We wouldn’t do this with a broken bone, but the solution to a broken bone is setting the bone, whereas the “solution” to Down Syndrome has historically been abortion.