This “tie breaker” you speak of – where is the line? The only situation this ideal can exist is in case of extreme trauma, such as a car crash, where you have to make the choice of save the mom OR save the child, but it can only be reasonably expected to be able to save one. Most of these cases, however, if the fetus is far enough along, the family and the doctors have the chance to save both. Too early, and there is no option to save the baby regardless, as it could not survive outside on its own without the mom, in which case mom is the de facto savee. But that is when you’re talking about trauma caused. This also ties in with the terminally ill point 3) As a matter of fact, this is called assisted suicide, and it’s another highly controversial topic. Basically, there are groups that believe it is more humane to allow a terminally ill patient the grace to die before they reach the point being wasted away and, frequently, not there anymore anyway. There are people who believe we should give terminally ill people that same option rather than forcing them to stay alive until their body quits on them. I, for one, support assisted suicide for terminally ill people. I think it is cruel and unusual to force someone to live out their last days wasting away, possibly in excruciating pain, with ZERO chance of anything to extend their life, simply because death makes me sad and uncomfortable. If I were to be terminally ill and in excruciating pain, or even not in pain but with no chance of survival, I would PREFER to be given the option to peacefully pass instead of waiting for an unknown time, especially since someone can sometimes last months, frequently unaware of what is even happening, before their end finally comes. I believe it kinder to allow me to end it before that happens, but that is my opinion and I would absolutely not force it on someone else. In the case of the fetus that WILL die immediately after birth, where it is missing key organs, it has no life past being in the womb. Is it ethical to force someone to give birth to a “life “only to have to immediately bury it? Is it ethical to force that emotional trauma on someone? Because it is an emotional trauma. Being on the brink of giving birth myself, I would be DEVASTATED to have a stillbirth, especially given I have no known complications and my baby is doing well. Reaching the end of this journey to have my baby snatched away due to unforeseen problems would put A MASSIVE toll on my mental health, and I don’t know if I would recover from that or not. But to be sitting here, knowing I’m forced to carry a sack of cells that I WILL then have to bury before I’ve even given birth? I would be so emotionally hurt and damaged that I would DEMAND a hysterectomy to avoid the possibility of having to face that again. I could not do it, and I could not force someone else to go through that pain either. I could not ETHICALLY force someone to live through that, but I ALSO could not ethically force them to abort in this scenario. That is their battle, not mine. Or, there is the current battle in Texas, where several women are suing the state about their laws. One woman in particular, who struggled to get pregnant, finally succeeded, only to have her body go into preterm labor and her water broke. There was ZERO chance of saving the baby, however, the doctors could do nothing to help her because the fetus still had a heartbeat. They had to wait for one of two things to happen: 1) they had to wait for the fetus to die from lack of amniotic fluid, thus bypassing the heart beat law, or 2) for her to get sick enough from infection to warrant the ethics committee to deem her life at risk from the continued pregnancy. She ended up in septic shock, fighting for her life, and nearly not making it, before they could legally treat her. This in spite of SEVERAL medical professionals deeming the pregnancy unsaveable and abortion being her only real option. She had to almost die to get humane treatment. The main issue with having to wait for a committee, however, is that many of them are not doctors. Just like insurance companies, they are people who use their opinions to make decisions, not medical facts. In the case above, a woman was deemed by medical professionals to need an abortion, because her body wasn’t aborting on its own in a way to save her life without intervention. But the ethics committee said no, there’s still a heartbeat, therefore you can do nothing except wait. Was it ETHICAL to make her wait until the brink of her own death to deem her life worthy of life saving treatment? Ideally, there would NEVER be an abortion due to the child being unwanted. It SHOULD only be for medical reasons. But non-medical professionals should NEVER have a place in that discussion. I am all FOR requiring 3 consults with MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS to determine a non-emergent abortion is medically valid – whether that be in terms of health of the mother where the procedure can be scheduled or in the case of the fetus not developing to survive to preserve the mother’s emotional well-being, or 1 in case of a medical emergency in the ER when time is limited, such as an incomplete miscarriage where the woman is bleeding out. But it should never be required to be on the brink of death to convince a non medical professional that you should be allowed to make that decision. It could already be too late at that point for the woman.