Hypothetical.

Dateline: near future (5-10 years from now)

Scientists have discovered advanced pre-natal screening processes that can detect thousands of debilitating diseases in the womb, early on, with the hopes of combating them before the baby comes to full term.

Of course, modern medicine cannot cure everything.

Let us suppose you and your wife manage to conceive a child. You go in for this non-invasive, inexpensive procedure in the middle of the second trimester.

The doctor tells you the bad news; the baby has a debilitating nervous disease that will cause it to have, essentially, a constant electrical storm raging across the brain. It will not have the ability to develop a personality, or even motor skills past the most basic at the brain stem. It will know only pain and suffering during its existence, with painful spasms making up the times when it is conscious, and the convulsions and shaking making it difficult to even rest. It will never be able to care for itself, and there is no way for medicine to fix this problem, even if the baby is put into a medical-induced coma; the spasms would continue to wrack the brain and body.

If brought to full term, the baby would be delivered successfully, with no medical problems for the mother. However, the seizures would start immediately after.

Do you

a) abort the baby, not wanting to put a life through pain and suffering, or

b) bring the baby to full term with the remote chance of science being able to cure this debilitating disease within its lifetime? Keep in mind that you would be in fact fully responsible for the medical bills incurred during your child's existence, and it will never know anything but pure brain chaos and pain.

If brought to full term, I would fully support euthanasia.

I would research that opinion first and get a second opinion. Then I would check into possible treatments for the situation.


Okay, so that misses the point of a hypothetical. Trying again:

Assuming the child would live in this way with no possibility of treatment, I would almost definitely abort on the grounds of not wanting anyone, child especially, to live in this way. Given I'm not that big on religion, that shouldn't surprise anyone though.


Caveat: I had feveral seizures as a child. Not fun. Fortunately, it's a childhood illness that does go away. My father was faced with treating me with something called phenobarbital in the middle stages of all that, which would've knocked off I believe somewhere between 8 and 12 IQ points. Not good. He went against the doctors on that one, opted out of their diagnosis, saved me a slice of my mind.

Case in point being, doctors screw up. And seizures suck, too.

I don't believe that any doctor can *ever* make such a call.

They are mere humans.





My parents were told that I would not survive.

Heart issues; said I'd be too weak to move, defective heart, all that stuff.

That if I didn't undergo *immediate* and major heart surgery once I was born, my life would be much as described in the example above.

My parents ignored 'the experts' - and chose hope over 'certain death'.



*raises hand*

I'm here.

And moderately trim and healthy. My heart kept developing after I was born.


Hypothetically yours,

- Desmond

*raises hand*

I know the answer to this one!! Pick me, Pick me!!

*cough*

The mother must have the baby so Kevn can adopt it as soon as it's born.

Did I win?


Leilany

Ha-ha! love it.

To answer the question, the only humane thing to do is to abort the baby or put it to sleep when it's born. I would do the same on a whole lot less "serious" of diseases myself like Down's syndrome, etc.

Once you are a person, if you have a debilitating disease or condition you have every right to expect the utmost of support from the state and from your community. I fully support the right of all individuals regardless of disability, to life and liberty but...

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't stop such people from being born into that situation if we can stop it. It's sensible, moral and humane. IMO it's inhumane to let a child be born, knowing it's going to suffer it's whole life and cause suffering to others when it could be aborted and a different healthy child born in it's place.

What Dianne said. That sums up my position perfectly.

Thank you, Dianne. It would be nice if more people took a deep breath and considered each and every unique situation instead of making blanket statements.

Leilany

Just out of curiosity, what level of suffering would be required for this to be the humane option? What about something that was purely mental? Anyone ever see The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off on TLC?

As for the hypothetical, taking away the positibility of a real life situation with human error, etal, then I would chose to abort.

I also agree with Dianne.

My parents were told that I would be born dead or severely brain damaged due to my mother's onset of myasthenia gravis and the resulting heart attack she suffered while she was pregnant with me. Every doctor recommended in no uncertain terms to abort.

And, like Desmond, here I am. A little premature, a little mouthy, but I beat the odds pretty nicely.

My mother told me about this and my first reaction was "Mom, no offense, but I would have went through with the abortion." If I were in her situation, I would have done so. Just because I personally beat the Vegas odds doesn't mean I would be able to base a similar decision on such overt luck. If I hadn't, I shudder to think of the poverty my family would have been thrown into (we were pretty damn poor already) and what kind of life I could be leading right now.

When doctors are unerring, this example could be considered.

I trust the medical profession to leave finances out of the picture about as much as I trust a car insurance agency to pay a claim on time.



I would say that mercy-killing can be the lesser of two evils.

But how can one be so sure when it's the right thing to do?

That is the issue here.

Well I guess this kind of stuff is always fraught with subjectivity. I think those kinds of things should be decided by the parents or society as a whole with the professional guidance of knowledgeable people (i.e. - doctors). Although as Cory's amazing story points out, doctors make mistakes in judgement all the time, and will likely continue to do so.

I don't think the state should be in a position of forcing abortions on mothers that feel that they *want* to bring the brain damaged or obviously diseased children into the world, and as I said, I think once your here, you pretty much should get all the assistance necessary. I just think that abortion should be seen as the highly practical remedy it is and mothers should be encouraged to use it if a problem with the baby is found at an early enough stage. Many of the diseases that are a scourge on society today will soon be detectable when the foetus is only a few hundred cells and arguably not a baby at all.

It just doesn't make sense to me to bring obviously "severely-disabled-for-their-whole-lives" kind of babies into the world and then spend millions keeping them alive when a healthy baby can be born in it's place.

I should add that I have never had a baby and am not a parent so everything I say should be taken with the appropriate grain(s) of salt.

Actually your opinions are just as valid as anyone's, and therein lies a point.

I have no statistics, but I'm guessing that many people (most?) that consider abortion don't already have children. These are the people who make the decision.




I remember fears of 'not being a good parent', finances, a good level of 'peace' in the home, that sort of thing. And we were *planning* on children.

There is an incredible shift in values that most parents go through. I can easily imagine the toys, lifestyle and so forth that a childless life would have provided. As it is, I have three children to be putting through college in the coming years instead.

I can say easily - I could care less about the 'stuff' I would have had. 'Stuff' provides for a very brief happiness.

Poverty? There are lots of poor parents with children. Who would be quite financially wealthy otherwise. Such people are richer in life than might be guessed, even though they may not have 'stuff' or money.