Benatar is a serious academic who has done academic ethical theory; which are intriguing and should be engaged with.

Nevertheless, your argument also applies to the anti-natalists themselves too. I've found it rare in anti-natalists in general to have read Benatar's book, utilitarian theories or are well versed in philosophical arguments. Often times it's people who want to find arguments that justify what they feel internally and validate it. This is NOT the purpose of philosophy at all.

People have misjudged, mis-charcterized and misunderstood the the work to the point that anti-natalism has become a "movement" or "an idealogoy". I've yet to see a person who was life-embracing and an optimist and who read anti-natalist theories and changed his mind. What I have seen is many many people attempting to universalized an argument that shouldn't be universalized.

Unrelated to your comment, the statement itself is not even anything relatively new. 2500 years ago, before Abrahamic religions held dominion, there were popular religions that advertised " the extinction" of human race and condemned procreation.