I agree with most of what you said, except in the third paragraph I think you're heading towards slightly dangerous territory. Don't get me wrong, I still agree it's the mother's choice, but do you really think money should be the decisive factor whether a disabled child should live or die?
I know it's different in America, where you don't have the same social net as we do in (most of) Europe, but to me, this seems like a very weighty argument in favour of universal health care, so that a mother doesn't need to abort a wanted but disabled child because she can't afford the medical care.
Mm, I should clarify.
First off, I don't think a fetus is a person. To me, it is not yet a child. A fetus in the womb with birth defects or disabiilities is not the same thing as a disabled child who has already been born, in my opinion. I was not advocating treating disabled children as liabilities.
Disregarding my views on possible personhood for a moment, I was not saying that money
should be a decisive factor, nor that it's a fair or reasonable one.
I was saying that very simply, poverty and/or lack of access to healthcare is a
reality that people face. It's not my place or the law's place to judge that. Many people have to make that choice between a wanted child and termination because they would be unable to support a disabled child. My sympathy is with them, not my judgment. Not having enough money shouldn't be such an issue in the
first place when it comes to healthcare, but it is.
BTW, If you've read my original post on this thread, you can see I'm a pretty liberal gal. I love the idea of universal healthcare, but in the U.S. at least, for now that's all it is- an idea. I can't even say for sure that it's considered a goal. In mainstream politics and mostly conservative/libertarian circles here, universal healthcare is still a dirty phrase for some reason.
I wasn't specifically trying to make a case for universal healthcare, so that's probably just my liberal side inevitably coming out, lol. My main point is that not all people who choose abortion do it because the pregnancy/future child is not wanted. Very few people, if faced with that choice, do it for selfish reasons. While there are many instances in which disabled children are fully functioning, happy, and not suffering, it's presumptuous to say that the parents' concern in aborting a fetus with disabilities is for their own convenience when for very many people, taking proper care of that child is not in their capacity. For anti-abortionists to imply that choosing abortion for a fetus with disabilities/birth defects is about a lack of compassion? When for a lot of people that child is wanted and making that decision is probably one of the hardest ones they could ever make? That's just cruel, not to mention extremely judgmental.
