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What if the existence of that child - just its existence, no concern for it's "productivity" - brings unquantifiable joy to its parents?
Do you know how many people I know? Less than most of them. Like, I might now a couple hundred people. Most of human productivity is completely disconnected and alien to me. Sure, you can make the argument about the man downtown who puts peaches in a can that I then enjoy, but that's a very transactional exchange of value. And zero exchange of meaning.
I get meaning from a subset of the group of people I know. You do too. We all do. We call these people close friends and family. We like that they exist and just that they exist.
This is not the case for a baby with anencephaly or cyclopia. These babies are, besides being very obviously deformed in a way that is highly distressing to look at (go look for yourself if you want to see what I mean), an unequivocally disastrous result for a pregnancy. Again, they are absolutely unable to survive for more than a few days at absolute maximum, because their bodies lack basic components required to sustain a human life.
This slippery slope argument in roughly the shape of “If we admit that the life of an infant who literally never grew a brain doesn’t matter, we have to admit that no human life has inherent value” is, in my opinion, obviously specious and not worth taking seriously. No, I’m perfectly capable of believing that the lives of normal, functional, reasonably healthy people have inherent value, while rejecting the idea that there is significant inherent moral value in a clump of human-adjacent body parts which are not animated by a functioning human brain, or which are missing parts so crucial that its impossible to survive without them.
That's just, like, your opinion, man!
But, seriously, you understand what I was trying to do there and with the rest of my comment; the "worth" of a human life is dependent upon its subjective relationship to other humans. Of course I can see that maybe a majority of parents with a child with those conditions you listed would be distraught. I also believe that some portion of them would treasure the fleeting moments with their child as worth it nonetheless (try to detect the anecdotal experience I'm insinuating here...).
The only remedy to this is to draw a line on when human life starts versus when it doesn't. I'm happy to have that discussion because I think it is unresolved at various levels (scientific, philosophic ... not religious, however). What I'm saying is that your rubric of "usefulness" or "worthy enough life" is specious because you're trying to apply an objective rule to what is a subjective problem.
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Then by all means, don't abort, just no endless media campaigns asking for money keeping Johnny who's sick with Fucked-for-Entirety-of-Brief-and-Stunted-Lifeitis alive for one more year, please.
Yeah but the tribe that's generally pro-abortion also tends to be pro public healthcare spending and bottomless purse spending on life extension for the elderly and/or their pets.
Which is the confusing issue here since based on all other Blue Tribe beliefs you'd think they'd really be the pro-lifers and vice-versa for the Conservatives. The whole script gets flipped essentially for this one issue.
No I don't think that follows, blue states (and canada) are implementing right to die and red media is calling it forced suicide of undesirables. Terri Schiavo case was all right wing people trying to keep a vegetable with no brain matter left alive. I don't see right wingers actually taking their parents out back when they get demented. I see a lot more DNRs being set up by my blue family and old school repubs as opposed to the MAGA ones who are leaving it in Gods hands (Gods hands being extraordinary medical interventions at end of life).
Yes, it's almost like we're legitimate when we talk about choice and freedom when it comes to health care choices that doesn't effect other people - want a baby, great we think the state should support you heavily. Don't want it, great, here's state funding for abortion. Want to rage against the dying of the light? Let's use public health to do so? Don't want to be a burden, that's cool too.
I don't understand what you're saying here. So you do support assisted suicide?
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This is a fair and valid opinion, albeit a touch indelicate.
It’s not that fair. What if those donors get some amount of joy from helping fund Johnny’s life extension treatments?
If you don’t like the media campaigns, just tune them out. Heaven knows conservatives have had to do it for decades.
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