McFarlane v Tayside Health Board [2000] 2 AC 59[1] is a leading House of Lords decision concerning wrongful birth in the English law of negligence, though the case was Scottish.

The couple claimed on two bases: first, the physical discomfort suffered by the wife from the pregnancy, confinement, and delivery; second, the financial costs for the caring of and bringing up of a child.

[citation needed] The Inner House of the Court of Session reversed the decision, saying that the wife was entitled to damages for the effects of pregnancy, and the benefits associated with parenthood were not required to be balanced against the loss.

The logical conclusion, as a matter of law, is that the costs to the pursuers of meeting their obligations to the child during her childhood are not recoverable as damages.

[5] Lord Steyn advances a distributive justice argument, that the court needed to consider whether spreading the burden across society was just, which for wrongful conception, it was not.