You cannot sue your parents for being born. No U.S. court has ever allowed such a claim, and the structure of American tort law makes it effectively impossible: you cannot show that existing is a legal injury, you cannot tie that “injury” to your parents’ conduct in a way courts will recognize, and no judge can order a remedy that undoes a birth. The closest legal theory, called wrongful life, is something very different and is rejected in most states.
Why Existence Isn’t a Legal Injury
Every lawsuit in a U.S. court requires standing. The Supreme Court set out the three requirements in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife: a concrete, actual injury; a causal link between that injury and the defendant’s conduct; and a remedy the court can actually deliver.1Legal Information Institute. Standing A “you shouldn’t have had me” claim fails all three.
Start with the injury. Damages in tort work by comparing where you are now to where you would have been without the defendant’s actions. If the alternative to your current life is never having existed at all, the comparison has no baseline. There is no version of “you” that was worse off, because without the birth there is no “you” at all. The New Jersey Supreme Court captured the problem in the 1967 case Gleitman v. Cosgrove, holding that a court “cannot weigh the value of life with impairments against the nonexistence of life itself.”
Redressability is just as fatal. A judge cannot unbirth someone. Money damages require a calculable loss, and no method exists for turning “I wish I hadn’t been born” into a dollar amount. A claim with no coherent remedy cannot proceed, no matter how it is framed.
Wrongful Life: The Closest Legal Theory, and Why It’s Not the Same Thing
American law does recognize a doctrine that sounds related, called a wrongful life claim, but it is far narrower than a lawsuit against parents for procreation. A wrongful life claim is a form of medical malpractice. The plaintiff is a child born with severe disabilities, and the defendant is a doctor or genetic counselor who allegedly failed to diagnose a condition or warn the parents. The theory is that competent medical care would have allowed the parents to prevent the pregnancy or birth. Parents are not the defendants.
Even in that narrow form, most courts refuse to recognize the claim, and for the same philosophical reason. Roughly 37 states have rejected wrongful life claims by court ruling or by statute. Michigan’s law, for instance, bars wrongful life claims “regardless of whether the child is born healthy or with a birth defect or other adverse medical condition,” carving out only intentional or grossly negligent conduct.
Only three states have ever recognized the claim: California in Turpin v. Sortini (1982), Washington in Harbeson v. Parke-Davis (1983), and New Jersey in Procanik v. Cillo (1984). Even in those states, recovery is limited to “special damages,” meaning the extraordinary medical costs of treating the child’s condition. No state has ever allowed a wrongful life plaintiff to recover general damages for pain and suffering.2Justia. California Civil Jury Instructions (CACI) 513 Wrongful Life – Essential Factual Elements Courts that allow the claim do so to make sure a disabled child’s care gets paid for, not because they accept that being alive is a compensable harm.
Wrongful Birth Is a Different Claim by Different Plaintiffs
Wrongful life often gets confused with wrongful birth, but they are separate. In a wrongful birth case, the parents are the plaintiffs, and they sue the doctor or hospital for the same alleged failure to diagnose or disclose. A majority of states recognize wrongful birth claims because the damages fit standard malpractice law: the parents seek the extraordinary costs of raising a child with a disability, including specialized medical care, adaptive equipment, and special education. They are not claiming that life is an injury. They are claiming they were denied information they needed to make a reproductive decision. That is why courts hear it.
Neither wrongful life nor wrongful birth provides a route for a person to sue their own parents for the fact of their birth. Both are malpractice claims against medical providers.
What Happens if You File the Lawsuit Anyway
If someone tries to file such a suit, the consequences fall on the filer, not the parents. Federal Rule 11 requires that every pleading be grounded in existing law or in a good-faith argument for changing it, and that its factual claims have evidentiary support.3Legal Information Institute. Rule 11 Signing Pleadings, Motions, and Other Papers; Representations to the Court; Sanctions A lawsuit treating birth as a tort meets neither. Most state courts have parallel rules.
When a court finds a violation, it can impose sanctions to deter repetition. Sanctions can include orders to pay the opposing party’s attorney fees and costs, or a penalty paid to the court. A court can sanction the signing attorney, the law firm, or an unrepresented party who filed on their own.3Legal Information Institute. Rule 11 Signing Pleadings, Motions, and Other Papers; Representations to the Court; Sanctions
Repeat filers can be designated “vexatious litigants,” which restricts their future access to the courts. That designation may require posting a security deposit before filing anything new, and a judge can enter a prefiling order requiring advance permission for any new case. Most attorneys would decline to take the case at the outset, so a person pursuing it would likely be filing pro se and absorbing all the risk personally.
Where the Question Came From
The idea went viral in 2019, when Raphael Samuel, a 27-year-old businessman in Mumbai, India, announced he planned to sue his parents for giving birth to him without his consent. Samuel identified as an anti-natalist and argued that parents have children for their own satisfaction, that life inevitably involves suffering, and that procreation strains the planet’s resources. His parents, both lawyers, responded publicly and calmly. His mother, Kavita Karnad Samuel, said: “I must admire my son’s temerity to want to take his parents to court knowing both of us are lawyers. And if Raphael could come up with a rational explanation as to how we could have sought his consent to be born, I will accept my fault.”
No lawsuit was ever filed or adjudicated. The announcement functioned as a publicity vehicle for an anti-natalist philosophical position, not a viable legal action. The philosophical arguments behind it are debated seriously by philosophers, but they do not translate into a claim a court can hear. A court needs a plaintiff who exists, an injury it can measure, and a remedy it can deliver. A suit over being born supplies none of those.