Reply #28: Not quite

[Az]

Many of these laws came from a time when our understanding of identity was less developed. There have been cases where the parents of such births have actively decided to pull the plug on this form of existance with the cooperation of the law. They often are opposed by fundamentalist organizations.

The laws of this land tend to try to err on the side of caution. Thus when it interferes with medical practice it does so erring to preserve what may seem to be existance. But to any in the medical field such a thing is not a being. Thus the doctors will typically opt to terminate such a thing while it must deal with outdated laws. In the end they should always defer to the parents wishes.

Life? Certainly. But there is no mind present. It is a living tragedy. Representing pain and loss to its parents. The sooner it is accepted the sooner the healing can begin.

Do not confuse abiding by the emotional desires of the parents for determining what is a being or not. The birth of such a thing is tramatic in the extreme. To rip something that appears to be a mother's child from her arms and simply dismiss it as a mindless carcass is heartless in the extreme. She will have to mourn the fact of the issue. And in our compassion we allow her time and closure before such a thing is terminated or allowed to cease on its own.

The moral responsibility here is to the mother and not to the baby. There is no person present there. Merely the shadow of one. An echo lost to the vagauries of biology.