What about anyone who is in a coma? How long will they be allowed to remain that way? Will they even be given any type of life-sustaining care? Will they pull the plug in a week? A month? Six months?
What about someone who has lost the use of their limbs? Paralyzed in an accident? Is it worth the cost to keep them going?
Who is going to determine whether or not your life is “worth it”?
What about advanced directives? Aren’t they going to be essentially null and void if the government is going to decide on how long you live and what kind of end of life care you receive?
Anyone who has a major health issue, even children with down’s syndrome are going to be a drain on the health care system and the taxpayers. Handicapped need wheelchairs, physical therapy, special education, long-time care, special housing etc. Which ones should be killed off or denied life-saving medical care?
This is just more than old people at the end of their lives. This is children, adults, teens with special needs, victims of disease or accident or born with defects.
As one who has had major health issues over the years, kept working (at a job you wouldn't believe), and overcome (or at least made a guarded truce with all of them), I'd like to point out that Down’s kids have been mostly sorted out of the mix before birth. Not that there aren't a few of them around. There's just not as many as a percentage compared to their statistical representation in the past.
Due to amniocentesis, they can be detected well before birth. After the determination's been made, it's open season on ‘em. Problem is, the tests are not always accurate (you can see what's coming). We were told that our daughter was Down’s. Not that it made any difference to us, we're not that sort of procreators. We thanked the Doc for the information, and my wife continued to gestate.
She went full term + and now our daughter's 12, and an honor student in her charter school class. Sometimes the answers that technology provides, aren't accurate (and there's one of the problems). So you see, a little faith, and some individual morality can do great things. It certainly did so for Rachel. :-)
As for our son, he's something of a statistical anomaly as well. Technology saved him in-utero (that and a bit of divine intervention), but that's another scary story.
Fact is that 3/4’s of our family would be dead by now without some VERY unlikely “saves”. Saves that were so statistically unlikely that there was pretty clearly some divine intervention involved (I'm a pretty pragmatic guy and believe me, this is not an overstatement). I really do think that when you walk with God, improbably nice things happen. It's true for us.
Sonia Sotomayor