Andy5566

Thank you for your kind and compassionate replies. csekavec, your reply struck me as I have recently read mans search for meaning by Victor Frankl and there were times when I was brought to tears by the inhumanity, but his ability to rationalise impressed on me what a great mind and great man he must have been. No I would not choose suicide, but I think I would make that choice in the vain hope that I would be the lucky one who somehow got out of the scenario. Imagining that hypothetical scenario and in my current situation, I feel like an ostrich with his head in the sand. I have no clear way to think about this and make a choice, whereas my partner is thinking deeply and rationalising each possible choice and outcome.

I recently got some very good news, my partner is pregnant. My partner suffers from high blood pressure and although this is being treated and controlled well at the moment, we have been given a prognosis that she only has a 30% chance of carrying past 28 weeks. There are a couple of other factors that are making this pregnancy more dangerous for my partner and baby. For anyone who isn't aware, giving birth to a child before 28 weeks leaves it open to very serious, permanent complications. After 28 weeks it is still dangerous but considered a lot safer for the baby. I have done a lot of research and also been in a lot of paedeatric wards and seen children who are severely disabled. Just today I saw a child who could do little more than lie on their wheelchair. If a baby is born at 22-23 weeks there is an extremely high chance that it will die, and if it survives be severely braindamaged - perhaps unable to do anything for themselves or even communicate. The hospital we are at now is in the top level of university hospitals in the country (Japan), so the care we are getting is as good as we could hope for. If the choice was between abortion or a life of disability without any communication, comprehension, movement, then I think abortion is the kind choice. Before we realised the gravity of our current situation we went for a screening scan and had decided that if our child had been found to have trisomy 13, trisomy 18 or even down syndrome, we would not have hesitated to have an abortion. Hypothetically, if the baby were capable of making a rational decision, I think it would consider the odds and make a decision based on likelihood of various positive and negative outcomes. I think it would be rational to choose abortion if the negative outcomes were extremely likely. It is not a simple decision for us. We really would love to have a child and bring it up peacefully. This decision is tearing our hearts in two and I am not really expecting an answer but if a skilled philosopher could shed some light on this it might help us through the process. Thanks for reading