LogFAQs > #902182619

iCurious posted...

Not the least of which is because one is dying of ailments and unlikely to survive

Likelihood of surviving is only one factor that's considered in deciding to take somebody off of life support. The other is the quality of life that can be expected if they do survive. Most of the time, if somebody's put on life support, it's to keep them alive until they can recover from whatever's endangering their life. They're only taken off when either that lifesaving effort is guaranteed to be futile, or more commonly, because they're never going to wake up with a decent life (vegetative state, profound cognitive impairment, etc.).

iCurious posted...

the other is a developing life being denied very good odds of reaching self sufficiency in a virtually guaranteed time frame.

Self-sufficiency in the sense of being able to live in the outside world? Sure. Self-sufficiency in the sense of being able to live without relying on others? That's never really guaranteed. Even after being carried to term, a child is going to be dependent on its parents for a good many years, meaning their quality of life is only going to be as good as what those parents can provide.

iCurious posted...

What the actual f***. This is patently false. Biological processes are considered natural. Human involvement doesn't suddenly make human reproduction artificial.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/artificial?s=t

produced by humans

If humans produce it, it's artificial. Is that an exceedingly narrow and pedantic interpretation of the term? Absolutely, which is why I prefaced that with "if you want to be really pedantic [...]". But it does illustrate how silly it is to use the line between natural and artificial as a basis for anything meaningful. On the flip side, most things we readily consider artificial are made possible through processes that could be considered natural, like muscle movement and brain activity. What you were saying wasn't a real example of the naturalistic fallacy, but it was relying on a similar perceived dichotomy between natural and artificial things that just isn't there. It's a very arbitrary line, and so shouldn't be used for anything as significant as a literal matter of life and death.

iCurious posted...

"You can't speak for yourself yet, so we're just going to assume you'd rather dodge this s***ty world that we're choosing to deliberately survive in ourselves. Bye."

You're making a very fundamental mistake in your understanding of my position. I am not in any way saying that every baby should be aborted because this world sucks so much. I'm saying that people who feel that they won't be able to give a baby a decent quality of life should be able to abort it. It should be a choice, made by each family (or would-be family) based on their own situation.
---

This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.