Are all Wrongs Wrongings?

It seems to me plausible that all wrong actions are the wrongings of someone or something.  To wrong someone or something is not to live up to the demands of the worth of that thing or individual.  Disrespect is a good example of a wronging, but disrespecting is certainly not the only way that one can wrong another.  Disrespecting someone--in the immoral instance--is failing to treat the person as having the appropriate worth.  A murderer, as well, is failing to acknowledge the worth of someone.  So the worth of individuals (and perhaps other things) is central to ethics (or should be!).  In contrast, if Utilitarianism is true then there are no wrongings, since the only goods on the Utilitarian view are goods which can be maximized such as subjective, desiderative states like pleasure.  There are right actions and wrong actions, but there's no place in the theory for wrongings or the violating of natural rights.  (There are legal rights for utilitarians but not natural or inherent rights).


Now one could certainly add to one's Utilitarian theory that one should aim to maximize things like respect.  But that won't help to get wrongings into the ethical picture, since a Utilitarian, in maximizing respect, isn't taking into account whether there is anyone wronged when disrepected.  Respect is a nice to thing to have, but it's just one among other goods to take into account when deliberating about the best state of affairs. It's states of affairs that are the thing, not individuals.  The only goods on the theory are goods in one's life; there's no place for the worth of an individual in the theory. But of course Utilitarianism is false.  There are wrongings and the worth of certain things matters.

Utilitarianism aside, are there some wrong actions, though, that aren't wrongings?  A theist might be able to capture almost all right and wrong actions in terms of wronging other people or God.  Suppose things like trees don't have rights and can't be wronged.  Still, a theist could ground the wrongness of cutting down the Redwood Forest for fun in terms or wronging people--perhaps future people, or, if that fails, wronging God by dishonoring him as creator.

Actions involving future people, though, raises an interesting question and might be a potential problem for reducing all wrongs to wrongings. If I know (or have excellent reason to believe) that a future child of mine will suffer irredeemable harm, then it would seem prima facie wrong to try to procreate.  But in trying to procreate, the non-existent child is not wronged (since there is no child).  Is this a case of a wrong action that is not a wronging?

I'm not sure.  Perhaps one could say in response that one would be wronging God in trying to procreate.  One could also deny the antecedent in the conditional and instead hold that one could never have excellent reason to know that the child will suffer irredeemable harms.  Or perhaps one can be wronged in the future by way of a series of causes some of which occurred in the past before one exists.

The reduction of all wrongs to wrongings continues to seem to me plausible.  Counterexamples are welcome.