According to a Fox News story, a girl who while in utero was diagnosed with Hydranencephaly - a condition where the brain’s cerebral hemispheres are absent - has made it to six years old.
The condition means that the child only has a brain stem which controls the key functions that sustain life but she has no cerebral cortex. Needless to say, this is an untreatable condition.
From my vantage point, this case opens up several cans of worms relevant in many ethical discussions that all stem (pun unintended) from the basic philosophical question of - not what is life, but what is humanity?
I am pro choice. As such, I say that this child’s mother should have had the choice to carry her damaged fetus to term. But I would not have made the same choice, even if I knew that my baby would make it six years rather than the year or so that most infants with this condition last, because in my view, this child is no more human than my car.
That’s hyperbole. The baby has human DNA and human parts. I know that my car doesn’t. But both the child and my car lack humanity. My car is not alive yet it needs fuel to go, releases waste products after using the fuel. The baby is alive but really, what kind of life is that?
In my estimation, it’s savage and cruel if a person knowingly allows a child to be born who has a terminal condition which will cause the child nothing but agony for it’s short life. This is more complicated than that but it can be argued that the life that this baby has been forced to endure is at least as cruel.
This also impacts how we might examine end of life issues. I am reminded of the Terri Schiavo case because she actually suffered from the same malady - Hydrocephalus - which led doctors to declare her permanent vegetative state. It was a state that her husband demanded his wife never wanted to exist in, a state that many of us with living wills would hope that the plug would be pulled.
Many of us - including myself - didn’t view Schiavo as living. What was she? A car with the ignition turned on. It will run until it runs out of fuel or breaks down, but nobody says the car is alive.
But, to play the devil’s advocate - maybe this six year old without a brain is proof that what we think we know about humanity is faulty?
I cannot make that argument, though I welcome people who can. When I read in the story that the child’s mother says “She’s a survivor, and she survived for me for a real long time,” I see the same delusions that was in Terri Shiavo’s family, who swore that her random movements actually was Terri in there. They are delusions brought about by the noblest human emotion - love - but that doesn’t change the fact that they are delusions nonetheless.
These situations are tragic but we should not let our emotions cloud the truth. These people are alive, but they are not human. I would not want a child to live this way nor my spouse nor myself. And I find it somewhat indefensible that others would.