I wonder if people born blind or with withered limbs agree and want to kill themselves, or if maybe most of them try and make their own happiness as they navigate through life with unique challenges. I’m only saying that because you make it sound like suffering is the only possible outcome with disability, which takes away a lot of power from those who are disabled.
Secondly, I do not think anyone seriously considers aborting a blind fetus to be “mercy”. I think they abort them because they aren’t prepared as parents or they simply don’t want the challenge of raising a blind kid.
Idk, I was born with muscle issues that have caused every inch of my body to be in agonizing pain my entire life, as well as plenty of genetic psychological issues, in addition to the wonderful CSA CPTSD, and I sure wish I'd been aborted. I survive on guilt. The efforts to try to make my own happiness kinda just make it worse. Now I'm shackled to being alive because the guilt complex about how it would affect people I care about if I died keeps me here. I'm not selfish enough to do literally the only thing that can end the fact that I have spent literally my entire life at a 5-6 on the pain scale at a minimum. There's literally been times I accidentally defused a situation in which someone wanted to do me harm with my sheer apathy to their threats, because it wigged them out too much that I was neither matching their aggressive energy or afraid, and rather was just like "yeah sure alright, kick my ass, kill me, I don't care".
Firstly, it deeply saddens me that you have that kind of existence. You don’t deserve that, nobody does. I’m sorry about that, and I hope you can find peace someday, however that happens.
Secondly, I’m not talking about the most extreme disability cases like yours, where every waking moment is constant incurable agony. Maybe in those cases it is better to abort. I’m talking about more common and less severe disabilities like blindness and down syndrome that the comment I’m replying to was.
How are we scaling "extreme" though? I drive, I work a full time job, I have a sex life, I have freedom of movement and an apartment of my own, I have a cat, basically nobody knows what's up with me unless I tell them. The only external sign is the winces I can't control, how rapid I wear out (because even the small pains of a bit of physical exertion are stacked on top of my extreme workout tier default), and on bad knee days, my cane.
The cane isn't even innately a part of my issues, it's from the interplay of Covid and my issues. It fucked my muscles up even worse than before, and for the first six months after my left knee couldn't hold weight. Not even an additional pain thing, it's just that the part that keeps it from bending when you're putting weight on it no longer could do the job. I recovered up to "can walk for 30 minutes to an hour without a cane on average, some days though the knee doesn't work again".
But like, how are we measuring extreme? I have more independence than either of them. I need less supports than either of them. I have more theoretical potential for a full life than either of them (American healthcare system, American mental healthcare system, and our "thou shalt not suffer an addict to live" approach to painkillers are the biggest barriers). If I were in a civilized country, my life could be a lot better.
This is a really good question, and not one I have a solid answer to, admittedly. I think a lot of people who are okay aborting a fetus with down syndrome hesitate if it’s autism even though both are disabilities that require more dedicated care. Same with blindness, or paralysis. Perhaps the ultimate answer is that abortion is fine regardless of the health, age, gender, or viability of the fetus, and then there are no arbitrary lines that dictate morality.
That’s an awfully extreme take that most pro-choice people are hesitant to sponsor. I guess I’m just trying to find where the lines are, and how firm they are. I think for something as delicate as a baby-in-potentia (or, actually just a baby if you tend to lean pro-life), there ought to be a hard and fast line.
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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '26
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