'Giving birth is morally wrong': the rise of the antinatal movement in the UK

“I didn’t ask to be born into this suffering, and neither did you.”. Ryan, 22, is a student in London. He believes that giving birth is morally wrong and that humanity should go the way of the dinosaur. This is the thinking of the antinatalists, a provocative philosophical movement that has grown across the world, bound by a shared desire to end human procreation. Unlike being childfree, a lifestyle championed by feminists in the 1970s and still popular today (underpinned by the idea that having children is no more or less selfish than not having them), the antinatalist’s endgame is voluntary human extinction.

These aren’t just fringe ideas: many Londoners are loudly espousing these views in social circles, at universities, and on popular podcasts. It comes off the back of an investigation by Taylor Lorenz, who revealed last weekend that Ashley St Clair, the mother of Elon Musk’s thirteenth child, was suing for sole custody on the grounds that she was raising the baby on her own. She alleges Musk has only seen the child three times since he was born last September.

Court filings reveal that Musk told St. Clair the two “have a legion of kids to make”, and that he wanted to “knock her up again”. The world’s richest man, along with many conservative Americans, believes he has a duty to father as many children as possible to quell a falling fertility rate. The pronatal movement is radical, and attracts ideologues: it’s found popularity in religious circles and among white supremacists.

Though the antinatalists sit at the other end of the spectrum, horseshoe theory would have it that they are similarly fringe-thinking. At the movement’s core is the proposal that life is suffering, and so introducing sentient life without their consent is immoral. The most famous case occurred in 2019, when a story went viral regarding Mumbai businessman Raphael Samuel, who attempted to sue his parents for begetting him. “It was not our decision to be born,” he told the BBC. The case was largely symbolic; Samuel’s motives were to persuade other parents against having children and the case had no resolution.

Like so many antinatalists, Ryan, who I interacted with online, spends a lot of his time on the internet debating ethical topics under a pseudonym. On forums and social media, I find a variety of motivations: from the environment, to overpopulation, the cost of living crisis, and genetic inheritance. His biggest concern is an impending war: “Why would I bring a child into a nuclear wasteland?” This phrase isn’t unique to antinatalists (it can be overheard at pubs across the country).

Antinatalist thinking has also been expressed over thousands of years, and from regarded philosophers like Emil Cioran or Schopenhauer. But what distinguishes today’s antinatalists is they operate like a movement who demand an end to procreation for all. The most influential of these is David Benatar, previously an academic at the University of Cape Town, whose 2006 book Better Having Never Been popularised the term, and is referred to as gospel text.

He regularly features on podcasts, most famously with YouTuber Alex O’Connor, and on the ABC Radio National program The Drawing Room in 2024, around the release of his new book Very Practical Ethics where he says: “My view is whoever you create is going to have significant suffering in their life and they’re going to die. They could’ve been spared that, without cost to themselves, if they had never been conceived… We harm somebody by creating them.”.

In 2025, Benatar’s controversial ideas are being championed by younger people, who – exposed to one global crisis after another – find in them a certain comfort. The Reddit forum r/antinatalism, which is a hub of conversation around the topic (largely what can be called an echo chamber), now has 231,000 members, a leap from around 35,000 before the start of the pandemic.

At their most extreme, the antinatalists have been accused of behaving like a puritan cult, preaching Benatar’s frameworks like the scripture. On a Reddit post suggesting a London meet-up, one commenter is vitriolic about his neighbour’s children playing in the park: “we’re so sick of having to deal with narcissistic and selfish people who have kids.” Another gloomy forum is titled: “Born by chance, living by obligation.” (Even this report is likely to become the subject of a series of “debunking” posts or considered as pro-natalist propaganda on Reddit.).

Not part of the tribe? We are “natalists” or “pro-natalists” and the language used about us flips between sanctimony, pity, contempt, and mocking. On YouTube videos and forums, we are described with smug meme-speak (NPCs – non-playable characters – and Copium – social media-ese for someone coping). Because they believe life is suffering, I was surprised to read many requests for antinatalist dating apps and social gatherings – several of which Ryan has attended. Even for those wishing to end human life on Earth, there appears to be a need for community and belonging.