Wrongful Birth and Wrongful Life Claims Explained

The same missed diagnosis can give rise to two claims that courts treat almost as opposites: one, brought by the parents, is recognized in most states as an ordinary application of malpractice law. The other, brought on behalf of the child, is rejected by nearly every court that has considered it — for a reason that has nothing to do with whether the underlying negligence was real.

Quick answer: Wrongful birth is the parents’ claim that negligent prenatal testing, screening or genetic counseling deprived them of the chance to make an informed decision about the pregnancy, resulting in a child with a serious condition — recoverable damages are generally limited to the extraordinary costs of that condition, not ordinary child-rearing costs. Wrongful life is the child’s own claim over the same negligence, alleging they would not have been born at all — and it is recognized in only three states (California, Washington, New Jersey), each limiting recovery to narrow special damages, because courts have no principled way to compare an impaired life against non-existence. Several states bar one or both claims by statute entirely.

What Triggers Either Claim

Both claims arise from the same underlying fact pattern: a provider’s negligence during prenatal testing, screening, or genetic counseling — a missed genetic marker, a misread ultrasound, an inaccurate risk assessment, a failure to order an indicated test — that deprived the parents of information they needed to decide whether to continue the pregnancy. The child is later born with a serious genetic or congenital condition the negligence prevented the parents from learning about in time to make that decision.

From that single set of facts, two very different claims can potentially arise, brought by two different plaintiffs, with two very different legal receptions.

Wrongful Birth: The Parents’ Own Claim

Wrongful birth is brought by the parents, on their own behalf, for their own losses — not a claim that the child should never have existed. Most states that have addressed the question recognize it as a fairly ordinary application of malpractice principles: a provider owed a duty to accurately convey diagnostic information, breached that duty, and the breach caused the parents to lose a decision they were legally entitled to make.

The damages fight is almost always about scope. Courts have consistently limited recoverable damages to the extraordinary costs specifically attributable to the child’s condition — additional medical care, specialized equipment, therapy, and education beyond what any child would need — while denying recovery for the ordinary costs of raising a child, which every parent incurs regardless of disability. Courts generally reason that ordinary child-rearing costs are too bound up with personal values and too speculative to reduce to a dollar figure, and that awarding them would effectively treat the child’s very existence as the compensable harm — a step most courts have been unwilling to take even while allowing the claim to proceed at all.

Wrongful Life: The Child’s Own Claim, and Why It Almost Always Fails

Wrongful life asks a different, more controversial question: not what the parents lost, but what the child lost by being born at all rather than never existing. The claim is brought on the child’s own behalf, typically by a guardian, and most courts have rejected it outright.

The most influential statement of why comes from the New York Court of Appeals’ decision in Becker v. Schwartz (1978): a court has no rational, principled way to weigh the value of an impaired life against the value of never having existed in the first place. An ordinary injury claim lets a jury compare a plaintiff’s condition after an injury to their condition before it — a workable, if imperfect, yardstick. A wrongful life claim asks a court to compare something to nothing, and most courts have concluded that comparison cannot be made in any legally coherent way.

Only three states allow it, and only in a narrow form. Turpin v. Sortini (Cal. 1982) made California the first state high court to recognize a wrongful life claim at all — but even there, the court limited the child’s recovery to special damages (the extraordinary costs of the child’s own condition) while explicitly denying general damages for pain, suffering, or the fact of having been born with the impairment. Washington and New Jersey later reached broadly similar, similarly narrow results. “Allowing” wrongful life in these three states means something considerably more limited than an ordinary personal injury claim — not an open-ended claim for the value of the child’s entire existence.

States That Bar These Claims by Statute

Beyond the courts’ general reluctance to recognize wrongful life, a number of states have gone further and enacted statutes specifically prohibiting one or both claims — removing the question from judicial discretion entirely. Representative examples include Minnesota, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, and Iowa (Iowa Code § 613.15B), each barring wrongful life, wrongful birth, or both in some form. Michigan takes a distinct middle position: it allows a claim, but only where the underlying conduct was intentional or grossly negligent, not ordinary negligence — a materially higher bar than most malpractice claims require.

Because this area is unusually state-variable — recognized broadly in some states, barred entirely in others, and narrowly limited even where “recognized” — confirming your specific state’s current rule before assuming either claim exists is essential, not optional.

Evidence That Decides These Cases

• The prenatal testing and screening records themselves — what was ordered, what was performed, and what the results actually showed
• Expert testimony on the applicable standard of care for the specific test, screening, or counseling session at issue, and how the provider’s conduct deviated from it
• Documentation of what the parents were actually told, and when, since the claim turns on the information they did or didn’t receive in time to make a decision
• A detailed accounting of the child’s actual condition and its associated extraordinary costs — medical care, equipment, therapy, specialized education — since this is what damages are actually built around
• The child’s complete medical and developmental records, establishing the condition’s severity and its ongoing and future costs

Practical Steps

1. Confirm whether your state recognizes wrongful birth, wrongful life, both, or neither, since this varies enormously and some states bar these claims by statute entirely.
2. Obtain the complete prenatal testing, screening and genetic counseling records, including exactly what was ordered and what was communicated to the parents.
3. Get an expert evaluation of the applicable standard of care for the specific test or counseling session at issue.
4. Document the extraordinary costs of the child’s condition specifically, separately from ordinary child-rearing expenses, since that distinction usually decides the damages available.
5. Consult an attorney experienced in this specific area of malpractice law, given how unusually state-variable and legally distinct it is from an ordinary malpractice claim.

Sources & Further Reading

• Becker v. Schwartz, 46 N.Y.2d 401 (1978) — recognizing wrongful birth while rejecting wrongful life, and articulating the “no yardstick” objection most courts since have relied on
• Turpin v. Sortini, 31 Cal.3d 220 (1982) — the first state high court decision recognizing a wrongful life claim, limited to special damages
• Iowa Code § 613.15B — a representative statute barring wrongful birth and wrongful life causes of action
• State statutes and case law on wrongful birth and wrongful life, which vary substantially by state and should be confirmed directly rather than assumed from a general summary
• See our guides to the four elements of a medical malpractice claim for the underlying standard-of-care and causation framework these claims are built on, birth injury and obstetric malpractice claims for the entirely separate delivery-room injury framework this is not, and our companion guide to wrongful pregnancy and failed sterilization claims for a related but distinct claim arising from a healthy, rather than disabled, unplanned child