this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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There are many more factors to consider than sentience when assessing the value of a human life. It is illegal for me to walk into a hospital and murder a brain dead patient on life support.
While I agree that the evidence seems to suggest that legal elective abortions affect some positive social outcomes, I am not convinced that that alone is a sufficient argument to permit legal late term elective abortions. Eugenics also produces desirable social outcomes, eliminating genetic diseases and improving overall intelligence and physical health. This alone is insufficient to validate the practise.
In the US, you could if you were the next of kin making decisions about care, but only by unhooking them and not ending their life in less potentially traumatic ways. Criminalizing euthanasia is another great example of unethical law, and it is legal in many places.
After 24 weeks there is a reasonable case to be made for this, however you might be interested to know that even after that point fetuses are kept anesthetized and sedated in the womb until first breath:
As you mention, eliminating heritable diseases is also eugenics, the kind that few complain about and many people still practice by choosing not to birth children with genetic defects, selecting partners with fewer genetic risk factors, or simply choosing not to reproduce. These practices have not been invalidated and persist to this day. The eugenics that people object to is forced eugenics, which more often than not overlaps with genocide.