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This one is very difficult for me. It's strictly a hypothetical, as I can't have children, but my wife will be in the foreseeable future, so it's something we have to consider as a couple.
On the one hand, there's the slippery-slope argument. If we're going to start aborting fetusus because they're going to be severely developmentally disabled, do we then start moving the line? Does it then become easier to abort a child with Down's syndrome? Or dwarfism? Or maybe we can abort children who are likely to have other undesirable traits, such as homosexuality or transsexuality? Or perhaps just aborting a child who isn't the sex you'd prefer, as is happening in India currently with some women aborting female fetuses?
Do I think it's going to come to that? Of course not, at least not on a large scale. I do have to think that, given their current attitudes towards alternate sexualities, my parents likely would have aborted me and Sissy had they known how we'd turn out, and the world would have lost a pretty good English teacher (not a big loss) and someone who someday is going to save a lot of lives.
So it's not as if I haven't considered the ramifications of aborting fetuses for having undesirable characteristics.
At the same time, I find slippery-slope arguments to be very problematic if there isn't a causal link that can be shown between point A and points B, C, and D.
If we found out that Grace were pregnant with a child like the one in the OP, I think I'd probably want to abort and try again. This wouldn't be a child who would be able to have any quality of life as we know it, and *might* detract from our quality of life. Becoming a parent is, at least in part, a choice made because it is believed that having children will be a positive influence on our lives.
As for the spirit part, I can see it from both an existential point of view and from an essentialist point of view. Existentially, if this is the only existence this person will ever have, does it make sense to bring him/her into a world where he/she will never be able to enjoy life the way we know that to be? If, as I believe, we posess and essense separate from our physical bodies, are we doing the child a favor by trapping that essense in a damaged vessel? I don't know the answers there for sure, but I think that my personal answer in both cases would be no.
I'll have to reluctantly say I'd abort, but I surely wouldn't be happy with that decision.
Gilda
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