Abortion for Severely Crippled?

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First, to preface, I’m about as pro-life as they get.

I’m in a discussion with a good friend who pointed out that it is cruel to allow a child who is going to come into the world and do nothing but cry and then die a prolonged, miserable death.

How do I counter this?

A little while ago I also had a conversation with a cousin who watched a video of a couple who knew that their baby would not last for more than a few days at best. They kept with the pregnancy. They picked out a casket and arranged for the children’s funeral before he was even born. I felt and explained that it was better for that child to feel love for 5 days than to be cut off from life before they were born.

Is there a better way to explain this?
 
ESPN anchor Stuart Scott recently died of cancer. In accepting the Jimmy V award for perseverance (in 2014, IIRC), Scott said, “When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live.”

I think that this perspective holds for your question, too. We all die – in a sense, some might think that we all ‘lose’ to the physical imperfections of our bodies. For someone who sees things this way – especially if they believe that this human life on earth is all we have – then suffering isn’t just an evil, it’s the ultimate evil, and therefore, it is to be avoided at all costs.

However, as Catholic Christians, we see that our life on earth isn’t the end-all and be-all of existence. That being the case, the way we live our lives is more important than the brute facts that are printed in our obituaries. Instead, we give glory to God “by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live,” as Scott asserted.

The baby who lives a short life – even if it’s a life that includes pain – nevertheless lives. He experiences the love of parents. He is a living, thinking human being whose life has value. And just as we cannot simply euthanize those who have terminal illnesses, neither can we deprive babies of their lives. (It’s a noble opinion your friend has, of course. He simply wants to reduce pain, and that, in itself, is a good thing. However, we cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak: we cannot achieve ‘the elimination of pain’ by murdering a person.)
 
ChristRocket said:
First, to preface, I’m about as pro-life as they get.

I’m in a discussion with a good friend who pointed out that it is cruel to allow a child who is going to come into the world and do nothing but cry and then die a prolonged, miserable death.

How do I counter this?

A little while ago I also had a conversation with a cousin who watched a video of a couple who knew that their baby would not last for more than a few days at best. They kept with the pregnancy. They picked out a casket and arranged for the children’s funeral before he was even born. I felt and explained that it was better for that child to feel love for 5 days than to be cut off from life before they were born.

Is there a better way to explain this?
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If someone went and shot a severely crippled child/baby who had been born I would assume they are a terrible person. Heroes aren’t remembered for going p into orphanages, hospitals, etc. and killing everyone there to put them out of their misery,

Babies can feel pain in the womb, it depends how developed they are.
 
ChristRocket said:
First, to preface, I’m about as pro-life as they get.

I’m in a discussion with a good friend who pointed out that it is cruel to allow a child who is going to come into the world and do nothing but cry and then die a prolonged, miserable death.

How do I counter this?

A little while ago I also had a conversation with a cousin who watched a video of a couple who knew that their baby would not last for more than a few days at best. They kept with the pregnancy. They picked out a casket and arranged for the children’s funeral before he was even born. I felt and explained that it was better for that child to feel love for 5 days than to be cut off from life before they were born.

Is there a better way to explain this?
Click to expand...
And when the criteria for such “mercy killings” is expanded to say those children born blind, some sort of mental illness, guaranteed low IQ, some sort of long term but non-lethal medical condition, hooked on drugs, HIV positive, gay, a girl in a very male dominated/oriented society, the “wrong” color, to poor parent(s), in an overcrowded and resource poor country?
 
ChristRocket said:
First, to preface, I’m about as pro-life as they get.

I’m in a discussion with a good friend who pointed out that it is cruel to allow a child who is going to come into the world and do nothing but cry and then die a prolonged, miserable death.

How do I counter this?

A little while ago I also had a conversation with a cousin who watched a video of a couple who knew that their baby would not last for more than a few days at best. They kept with the pregnancy. They picked out a casket and arranged for the children’s funeral before he was even born. I felt and explained that it was better for that child to feel love for 5 days than to be cut off from life before they were born.

Is there a better way to explain this?
Click to expand...
I believe there is a video showing the reaction of a baby being aborted…the pain that is created when a child is forced from a womb before it’s time. I wonder if your friend would consider abortion the more humane way to go.
 
It’s a matter of faith, it seems to me. We don’t have the right to decide who comes into this world and when they leave. We have to leave these things in the hands of our creator. God has a purpose for bringing that child into the world even if he will only live for one minute. We may not understand it, but we **trust **that that there is a reason for this life. The idea of redemptive suffering is one aspect. Is your friend Catholic?
 
it comes down to this, who are we to decide that someone’s life isn’t worth living?

maybe that baby was to be a recipient of a miracle and we destroyed that

and like a previous poster said, it opens up all kinds of cans of worms. it reinforces the notion that the disabled are inferior and are worthless and don’t even deserve a chance to live.

and believe me, it won’t end there. le’ts say that hypathetically, we do manage to catch every single baby that will be “severly crippled” and none are being born anymore. well, the next category are those with other kinds of disabilities. blindness, deafness, down syndrome, autism etC…

and as much as we try to erase disability, we can’t, because God has planned it in nto this world for many reasons.
 
Such a thing is barbarism disguised as mercy. We are not the arbiters of life and death. Tell your friend that this kind of thinking always ends up being an external authority deciding who is “fit” to live and who isn’t; thus, human rights themselves become subject to the arbitrary whims of the powers that be.
 
ChristRocket said:
First, to preface, I’m about as pro-life as they get.

I’m in a discussion with a good friend who pointed out that it is cruel to allow a child who is going to come into the world and do nothing but cry and then die a prolonged, miserable death.
Click to expand...
I feel for this baby, and the child’s family. It’s one of those things where you wouldn’t know what to do unless it was happening in your own life. Your heart and mind tell you not to let the child suffer in such a horrible way…yet again, terminating his or her life is still wrong, simply because we are not God and don’t give life, nor take it. This baby would be suffering a horrible death inside the womb as well during an abortion. It is never our right to take a human life, and it is murder, no matter the situation. I would, if I were the mother and father of this child, just pray, asking God to spare his or her suffering and take her before she has to be born and suffer an awful life.
 
Only the severely crippled have abortions. 😉 Pray for “life and blessing” to rule and reign, thanks be to God.
 
“In the absence of faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.”
–Flannery O’Connor
 
For those still interested-No, my friend is definitely not Buddhist and the coversation got turned into a group conversation.
I feel that I have a pretty good grasp on how to defend the Crippled baby argument.

I have a gentlemen at this point that is pointing out that in the beginning, the cells are merely potential for a human being and not actually a human being.

I’ve pointed out that natural law dictates that if uninterrupted, that those “Potential” cells which have already been created would become an actual human being-and that there is no difference in the murder of what he considers an actual human and the “potential” for a human life as the natural law dictates.

He stated that this is a “natural process” not a natural law.
 
ChristRocket said:
For those still interested-No, my friend is definitely not Buddhist and the coversation got turned into a group conversation.
I feel that I have a pretty good grasp on how to defend the Crippled baby argument.

I have a gentlemen at this point that is pointing out that in the beginning, the cells are merely potential for a human being and not actually a human being.

I’ve pointed out that natural law dictates that if uninterrupted, that those “Potential” cells which have already been created would become an actual human being-and that there is no difference in the murder of what he considers an actual human and the “potential” for a human life as the natural law dictates.

He stated that this is a “natural process” not a natural law.
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-Potential implies they could naturally develop into something else. My pile of lego blocks is potentially a car, train, spaceship, etc. The cells in question can only be classified as being a “potential human” if they could naturally develop into something other than a human. Going back to the lego analogy, your friend is confusing the pre-packaged with instruction booklet, only one way to put it together, already on step 2 of the instructions lego car set with a pile of random legos that could be built into a car or several other things.
-Natural law would be that life begins at conception which occurs prior to the division of cells.
 
Perhaps if we, as a culture, look at the words we use, it could help with the abating of some abortions. Words carry stereotypes.

The word “crippled” has a BOAT load of stereotypes attached to it. It’s a label that carries all kinds of assumptions and biases.
 
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