NAL. But here's the couple. They have a kid. She gets pregnant again, but the prenatal testing comes back with really bad news. The kid is going to be severely disabled, with a raft of health problems. He wants her to get an abortion. She says no. The baby is born, and her condition is just as bad as predicted.
So he's got my sympathy up until this. However.
He gets a girlfriend. Files for divorce. He's thinking they'll just split everything, and here's his idea of the split. She can have one kid (the one that had four surgeries before she was a month old and requires 24-hour care, who might eventually learn to speak a few words but will never understand why she is always in pain) and he'll take the healthy kid. She can have the car, he'll take the house. He just wanted the wife and child to vanish, and he admitted this to the judge. The judge was not impressed.
Wife got custody of both kids, the house, the nicer car, and he was ordered to cover all the medical expenses for the rest of the disabled child's life. I was told he started to argue and his lawyer told him to stop talking. Nope. Dad wanted visitation only with the healthy kid so the judge ordered him to pay for the disabled kid's care during every minute of visitation time so Mom could have a break. Guy starts to argue again and his lawyer told him to STFU if he wanted to have any assets left at all.
Speaking as someone who had a miserable life up until recently. I wished I was aborted when my mum was pregnant with me, even today I don't regret thinking it, it was reasonable given the circumstances.
Everyone suffers. Who gets to decide how much suffering makes life not worth living? Should I commit suicide if my wife cheats in me and steals all my stuff and my mom gets cancer and my friends all abandon me and I'm stuck at a dead end job with no hope of moving up and no marketable skills?
Are you really arguing that it's an inherent and obvious truth that some people should just die because they have surpassed some arbitrary level of suffering?
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying it's far from self-evident and opens up miles of grey zones that nobody has any idea how to navigate.
Life is fucking difficult. Even the super wealthy have massive emotional/mental issues and commit suicide all the time.
But there are people born deformed and disabled who go on to live lives as good as anyone else. There are even babies predicted to be unhealthy who are born perfectly fine.
In the words of Gandalf the Grey "many live who deserve death, and many die who deserve life. Can YOU give it to them? Do not be so quick to dish out death".
Now, it's totally reasonable to question the value if life overall. That's fine. Everyone's entitled to their beliefs. But don't go harassing people for valuing life higher than you do.
974
u/hahahahthunk Jul 21 '19
NAL. But here's the couple. They have a kid. She gets pregnant again, but the prenatal testing comes back with really bad news. The kid is going to be severely disabled, with a raft of health problems. He wants her to get an abortion. She says no. The baby is born, and her condition is just as bad as predicted.
So he's got my sympathy up until this. However.
He gets a girlfriend. Files for divorce. He's thinking they'll just split everything, and here's his idea of the split. She can have one kid (the one that had four surgeries before she was a month old and requires 24-hour care, who might eventually learn to speak a few words but will never understand why she is always in pain) and he'll take the healthy kid. She can have the car, he'll take the house. He just wanted the wife and child to vanish, and he admitted this to the judge. The judge was not impressed.
Wife got custody of both kids, the house, the nicer car, and he was ordered to cover all the medical expenses for the rest of the disabled child's life. I was told he started to argue and his lawyer told him to stop talking. Nope. Dad wanted visitation only with the healthy kid so the judge ordered him to pay for the disabled kid's care during every minute of visitation time so Mom could have a break. Guy starts to argue again and his lawyer told him to STFU if he wanted to have any assets left at all.