“Antinatalists’ views about “suffering” are intellectually stunted, immature and myopic.” This comes from Laura Hollis an attorney and university professor, as well as a nationally syndicated political columnist based in the US. She writes from a Catholic perspective and frequently defends the sanctity of life from conception to natural death. Thus, she thinks antinatalism is “intellectually empty.”

In her piece written for the Standard-Examiner in May 2025 (“HOLLIS: Antinatalism: The latest destructive ideology that must be eradicated”), she lays out three points that prove her case. This blog post will list each point and attempt to argue against them.

Point Number One:

“First, there is a remarkable disconnect between the antinatalists’ purported worldview and their personal experience. Two of those interviewed — “Ana” and “Mark” — have families and children that they love, but maintain that the world would be better if those children did not exist.”

Parents can become antinatalists after they have had children. There are cases where the parents observe the suffering of the child firsthand and come to the realization that it would have been better had they never been born. It is not that the world would be a better place without them, but, for their own sake, it would have been better if they were not born. Parents can still love their children notwithstanding the parents’ own antinatalism.

As an analogy, your last meal as a carnivore before switching to veganism was no less satisfying now that you are a vegan.

Point Number Two:

“Second, the antinatalists’ views about “suffering” are intellectually stunted, immature and myopic. While it is a natural — and generally healthy — desire to want to reduce human suffering, letting that impulse morph into a campaign to eliminate all “suffering” is impossible and ridiculous for reasons that should be obvious, but apparently aren’t.”

Many view antinatalism as myopic among other adjectives because it takes aim at suffering emphatically. But there is good reason for this. If eliminating all suffering entails, no more people via a moratorium on procreation, then, quite simply, there would be no one deprived of pleasures and thus, no one to care that there are no pleasures. The moratorium must be consensual to be clear.

“For starters, who defines what “suffering” is? What one person might view as overwhelming misery, another may see as more of a formidable challenge; you cannot superimpose your attitude about life’s difficulties on anyone else, or assume that they feel the same way you would in their shoes. (Indeed, as many people can tell you, you often don’t know how you yourself will react when confronted with real hardship until you actually face it.)”

No one is arguing that different people adapt to and process suffering differently. This does not mean, however, that suffering does not exist and does so in severe ways for each of us at different points in our lives. Hollis, while she is asking for a definition of suffering (or asking WHO defines it), also lists various examples of suffering in the blockquotes below as well as later in the article.

As for who defines suffering… Jesus himself does a good job at it and not just on the cross. He mentions thirst, hunger, homelessness, violence, political persecution, anxiety, grief, mourning, betrayal, isolation, etc. I do not think there is a person in existence that embraces these things as they are or because God tells them they are good. Furthermore, Hollis goes on to boast that, “Human life on earth is dramatically better than it was 1,000 years ago or even just 100 years ago. There is less war, less suffering, less hunger, less misery. Modern humans have achieved that and more, and few of those living centuries ago could have foreseen it.” If suffering is the divine path to God, why is it such a good thing that there is less of it?

“Even when facing events that most would agree are sources of great unhappiness — the loss of a loved one, for example, or a life-threatening illness or injury — our initial reactions to those events are not always our lifelong feelings; people heal, they adapt, they move on.”

Yes, people heal and adapt and move on, but adapting to negative changes does not erase the experience of those changes. We move on, but we carry with us sometimes physical and psychological scars. Adaptation sometimes means we lower our standards in what Benatar calls “adaptive preference.” In other words, we cannot acquire what we want, so we settle for less and make ourselves satisfied with that. This is not to say we do not grow stronger at times, but it comes at a cost either psychologically, physically or both.

“The impulse to eliminate all “suffering” ignores the good that comes from so many of the profound challenges we face in life, many of which make us stronger, wiser, more patient, more resilient, more sympathetic to others, more determined to solve the world’s problems.”

One such profound challenge is antinatalism. If successful, all suffering will be eliminated. As stated previously, a world without suffering is a better world. Wanting people to acquire virtuous traits is putting the carriage before the horse. People need to be wiser, not wise needs people (to be born). What’s happening in the latter is prioritizing a trait over an actual person who will suffer once born.

Point Number Three:

“Third, antinatalism sounds more like a pathology than an ideology.”

Hollis uses several examples that imply antinatalism causes mental illness. This is far from the truth. In fairness, antinatalism challenges very deeply held cultural, religious, political, social and psychological beliefs. Of course it appears as mental illness to some. But research on this matter is ongoing. More importantly, antinatalism’s premise and arguments make logical sense. You cannot deny logic unless it is a religious statement.

“But perhaps her most telling quote is this: “ There aren’t children waiting in some sort of purgatory, desperate to be born. There’s nobody there, so we’re creating problems for no good reason.”

The real message here is that humans have no souls. There is no afterlife, no God, no meaning, no real value.

It is here that the entire premise of antinatalists’ argument falls apart. According to antinatalism, the human race should become extinct because life without “suffering” has more “value” than life with it; since life without suffering is impossible, life should not exist. But such a conclusion is only tenable if there is an ultimate arbiter and a universal definition of things like “worth,” “value” and “meaning.” A universe without a Creator has neither.”

This is where things get tricky. First, Hollis is Catholic and should know that there is no soul before conception according to the Catholic Catechism. Therefore, the afterlife, life, God, meaning and value, have no worth or standing with a “soul” that does not pre-exist. It follows that the chance of hellfire is also negated.

If here Hollis is implying that it is God’s intention that we come into being, then every Catholic should be procreating as much as humanly possible – they either have Free Will or not.

Worth, value, and meaning do have universal applicability because they all stem from human well-being. As Sam Harris says, there are only so many ways to move from the worse suffering imaginable to the best possible outcome for human flourishing. This still applies in an antinatalist context except for the fact that the end-goal is non-existence.

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