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So, imagine you (or your partner or daughter) are 18 weeks pregnant. You turn up for your first routine ultrasound and discover that your baby will be born without a brain. Or you're 20 weeks pregant and you find a lump in your breast and are told you must treat the cancer right away if you want to live.Congress would like a word with you about what you do next.
Yeah, that's a different issue... though I understand that the concern is that the two issues of "availability" and "method" might now overlap uncomfortably. I just don't know how anyone can be okay with fetal death by blunt trauma -- or dismemberment, for that matter. Is that a death with dignity? I'm not even addressing personhood issues; let's just say it's the moral equivalent of a duck or a fish or something. Is gruesome and painful death in any case something that we can condone as a society?
Of course, there are situations like the ones you describe, and there are no easy answers to them. But it seems to me that not enough consideration is given to the fetus, which would undoubtedly feel its own death at or after 20 weeks. We give convicted killers lethal injections, we don't smash their brains in. Is there no concern about this issue?
