On a Woman’s Obligation to Have an Abortion

Abstract

Suppose you were born with Tay-Sachs disease. Imagine what your life would be like. For the first few months of life, you develop normally. However, by 8 1/2 months, when a doctor has diagnosed your problem (a few months after your parents knew you had one), your quality of life begins to go downhill. You become lethargic and your motor development declines. By 1 1/2 years, you have become blind. You have been experiencing seizures for a few months. By the end of your second year of life, you are paralyzed, deaf, and retarded. Breathing and eating become increasingly difficult, generally necessitating the use of a feeding tube or gastrostomy. It becomes increasingly difficult for you to have a bowel movement. By age three, you are not able to cough up mucus (a year ago, you were able to do it for 40 minutes straight!) so you must be suctioned. By about 40 months, you are dead of broncho-pneumonia.1 Because your mental development was arrested in a precognitive stage, you do not understand any of what is happening to you: All you know is pain and suffering until you die.