I'm frustrated with the people who insist that "doctors are often wrong! GOD CAN DO MIRACLES" even if the foetus has no brains (most commonly) or no lungs (instant suffocation upon birth) or no spinal cord or only half a head and in one case had exposed brains forming on his exposed spinal cord outside of his skull, and the probability of life is 0% with no room at all for error. Many are already dying. Often, the foetus is biologically incapable of achieving sentience or experiencing pain, which in many of those cases is a very good thing. Carrying the baby to term - if it even survives that long - may also very likely (in some cases definitely) kill the mother due to infections and other problems.1) One should trust that God knows better than doctors. Tim Tebow's name gets thrown out a lot, although it seems his case was a matter of "this kid will very probably die, you can abort now or try your luck" and they decided on the latter because they had little to lose, and he survived, good for them.
2) A deontological approach to morality: i.e. it is always wrong to take a life, even if doing so will save more lives.
I do consider it killing if the foetus is sentient. But I lean more utilitarian when it comes to morality, which makes it hard for me to empathise with the view that one should never take even a doomed life when doing so could prevent another person's death. It's basically a choice between dead baby, or dead baby and dead mother, and I can't accept that people would choose the latter. If I were going to die anyway and could choose whether my mom has to die as well, obviously I would want her to live.
I understand they believe one's duty is only to act ethically, even when doing so may allow greater evil to unfold. I guess it's similar to those voting third-party even if they believe Trump is worse and might win. But I'm still angry that people argue that if a mother truly loves her dying unborn child, she will willingly die alongside that child rather than choose to hasten its death that she may live, even if it means the rest of her children having to be motherless and everyone who loves her being devastated by her death. I grant that it may be honorable and sacrificial and selfless and let her die with a clean conscience, and can imagine a scenario where perhaps someone's kid is trapped and drowning underwater and she can either abandon the kid and survive or stay there with her kid to the end, even if it means drowning herself. I can totally understand someone choosing to do that out of love. But in the case of a foetus with no awareness of what its mother is doing, it's so maddeningly pointless, and would cause the suffering of so many other people beyond herself, which is arguably more selfish.
idk what are your thoughts?
(I used to be against late term abortion until reading up on it this week. They make up 1.3% of all abortions; in 70% of cases, the foetus has severe birth defects that mean it would never live, or have a very short and painful life if so. In most of the remaining 30% the mother's health/life is in serious danger. The irony is that banning late term abortions will mean targetting the most necessary ones that most pro-lifers would agree on.)
(This topic bothers me a lot because on the very slim but non-zero chance I ever end up pregnant, I'd need to go off medication that is the only thing allowing me to breathe normally right now (tuberculosis damaged my lung); which would mean 9 months in a state of near-suffocation and possibly dying, while the lack of oxygen will almost definitely cause major birth defects in any developing foetus who might also die. Because of that I'd likely choose to abort, but the what-ifs might haunt me forever, especially since the thought does make me feel guilty and selfish.)
