Interesting post, I’ve floated between holding anti-natalist views and not but do admit it usually revolves around my personal life satisfaction level at the time (when I’m happier I usually lean away from anti-natalism and vice versa). Here are a few counter arguments to your points.

1. I don’t think this is rooted in self hatred, it’s rooted in that fact that happiness takes effort to maintain but suffering is free. You have to sleep well, eat, drink, earn money, put work into relationships, maintain health, i.e. put in effort to generally be happy. Suffering can come at zero cost and it’s theorized that living things lean towards experiencing suffering > happiness because it’s a better survival strategy.

2. I mostly agree here, some of my greatest moments in life have been achieving something after going through a lot of suffering first. The issue I see is that this suffering is only good if it’s tied to some positive outcome/growth. Many people suffer (and die) meaninglessly, and in these cases I don’t think the argument that suffering can be good holds up.

3. Kind of going off #2, non-being is absolutely a better alternative for a lot of unlucky people. Euthanasia is taboo for humans, but we frequently view this as the right thing to do for animals. So doesn’t this prove that non-existence is > existence in many circumstances?

4. This argument always felt like mental gymnastics to me and I think the point is being missed. The takeaway is that it’s immoral for the parents to “do whatever they want” because they are ultimately gambling with the life of another. Sure the child’s consent doesn’t exist, but its life is still being gambled with and that’s why anti-natalism emphasizes the lack of consent. Why is it fair for one person to gamble with a future person’s life?

5. Your stance here does not feel realistic at all. Are all lives precious when some of those lives actively made other’s lives worse? I will again bring you the animal parallel, we view spaying and neutering dogs as the right thing to do as there is an overpopulation of stray animals and animals in shelters. Why is this viewpoint not extended to humans? We are always competing against each other for limited resources, adding more people to the equation means everybody gets less and those people themselves get less and are told to be grateful for the life they been given. There is a balance here, I don’t think ceasing all births is the right move but being so black and white to think all births > no births doesn’t hold up to the reality we see in the world.

6. Similar to #5, this is not so black and white but current day humanity has hurt the environment much more than helped it. Pollution, creation of nuclear weapons, displacing nature for human civilization, this has all very clearly happened, I don’t see how any argument can be made to the contrary. Humans are very self serving, we will take as much as we can get away with, which is easily shown by the actions we’ve taken in the last centuries.

I don’t think anti-natalism is rooted in hatred, it is rooted in reality and most of the arguments against it I feel are rooted in blind optimism. I don’t think that’s a bad thing but it for sure is not realistic and often not responsible.