Harrison shows an argument for antinatalism based on Davind Benatar’s procreational asymmetry, which he finds superior because it does not depend on the view that coming into existence is always a harm for the created being.

His argument is based on the moral duty to prevent pain as well as the duty to promote pleasure. However, since duties need a victim, he suggests that only the former applies to the act of procreation and thus:

• We have a duty to prevent the harms procreating causes, because there would be a victim (the created person experiencing the harms).
• We don’t have a duty to cause the pleasure procreating causes, because there would never be a victim missing out on or being deprived of those pleasures.

Harrison concludes that other things being equal, these generate a duty not to procreate.

Benatar’s central argument for antinatalism develops an asymmetry between the pain and pleasure in a potential life. I am going to present an alternative route to the antinatalist conclusion. I argue that duties require victims and that as a result there is no duty to create the pleasures contained within a prospective life but a duty not to create any of its sufferings. My argument can supplement Benatar’s, but it also enjoys some advantages: it achieves a better fit with our intuitions; it does not require us to acknowledge that life is a harm, or that a world devoid of life is a good thing; and it is easy to see why it does not have any pro-mortalist implications.

I believe closer inspection reveals that there is a positive duty not to procreate, other things being equal. Consider, we have already seen that the pleasures contained in a potential life are not pleasures anyone has a prima facie duty to create: no one would be wronged by the failure to create him. But there is a prima facie duty to prevent the (inevitable) pains contained in any potential life. Thus, when it comes to creating a new life, even a very happy one, there is a prima facie duty to prevent the suffering it contains but no prima facie duty to create the pleasures.