This information is being reported at a couple of international sites, but (if accurate) it has apparently been blacked out in the U.S.
The bomber at a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, has been identified as a 25-year-old man who left an online manifesto in which he described himself as a pro-mortalist, saying people didn’t give consent to exist.
The suspect is Guy Edward Bartkus, a 25-year-old man from Twentynine Palms, a small city about 35 miles northeast of Palm Springs. He left a 30-minute audio recording in which he explained his motive for the attack.
“I figured I would just make a recording explaining why I’ve decided to bomb an IVF building, or clinic,” he said at the beginning of the recording. “Basically, it just comes down to I’m angry that I exist and that, you know, nobody got my consent to bring me here.”
Describing himself as anti-life, he adds: “I’m very against [IVF], it’s extremely wrong. These are people who are having kids after they’ve sat there and thought about it. How much more stupid can it get?”
You are arguing that most people enjoy life, and those who predict that others’ lives will be full of suffering tend to projecting their own feelings onto those as yet unborn. The antinatalist might argue that, though historically this may have been the case, the circumstances are now different: climate change or the likelihood of nuclear war (for example) is sure to bring suffering hitherto unknown to us, for everyone in the coming generations. The debate would then be about (1) how certain this future suffering is, (2) whether there’s a type of suffering that makes any life not worth living (or whether the value of life even relates to what suffering it contains), and (3) how much suffering, or what kind of suffering, we can best predict for these future people. We can have these debates, but I don’t think it’s obvious that the reasoning of someone who disagrees with you must be “pants-on-head level”. These are serious questions that intelligent people can consider, and the antinatalist position is a serious position that you don’t have to be an idiot to arrive at.
Historically, approximately half of children died before the age of 5.
But I also don’t think it’s fair to compare modern reproduction with historical, because the contexts are very different. For starters, it is more of a conscious choice now due to modern contraceptives.
Secondly, modern society (at least in developed nations) tend to place a significant value on human life. Look at how things like medicine and safety have improved over the past 100 years, and of course the huge drop in child mortality rates. There is much more consideration given to individual well-being. There is of course another angle to look at: maximizing joy vs minimizing suffering. Positive utilitarianism vs negative utilitarianism. Antinatalism clearly focuses on the latter.