During watch sailors will talk about everything. Mostly we gripe about the chain of command or tell stories of girls, real and imagined. Last night during watch we had a discussion of responsibility with one party saying that the majority of things that go wrong in a persons life are that persons fault. My response to this asinine comment was “Yeah, totally. Everything that happens to you is your fault.” At which point my companion said he was glad that I agreed with him. “You were conceived and born and that was your fault too. I don’t agree with you, I believe in the old saying ‘shit happens’.” Well that discussion sparked another. A question was asked, a hypothetical question. A flawed hypothetical, but most are. The question was a ‘what would you do?’ question. The situation was as follows: a man and his wife have just conceived, they go to the doctor to ascertain the eventual heath of the child. Doctor had horrible news: your child will not be healthy, in fact he will require lots of attention and care, all your attention will have to be given to this child. Ok, say the man and wife, but he will still be normal in the head right? Well there is a 50/50 chance that the child will have permanent brain damage. The good news is that its not to late to perform an abortion.
The question is then this: would you let the child live and deny yourself the freedom to have other children and more than likely end up in debt because of the cost of health care? Sure there is 50/50 chance that the child could grow to go to college and contribute something worth while like a cure for cancer, but if you have the abortion you give the opportunity to more children. Like I said the question is flawed to begin with, it is just a dig to see if you are pro-life or pro-choice. The way in which the question was posed to me it was obvious the ‘correct’ answer was pro-choice.
My answer: have the birth. My companion then tried to attribute my choice to religion. I disagreed, even though there is nothing wrong with someone making a choice based on faith, I did not wont to have that fruitless discussion with him. So I took a different tact: seeing as there is less than a fifty-fifty chance that any child will ever amount to anything special and seeing as you roll the dice with every new conception I see nothing wrong with keeping the child. Not only that there are charities and government programs out there that will hep with the raising of the child, also if a couple were to find that they didn’t have what it takes, the courage and will, to raise the child adoption is a viable alternative; child services will find some way to take care of the child’s basic needs. However lets say that this couple has what it takes. The question your asking me is whether or not I would make the decision based on faith or economics. Is it right or wrong (is it black or white? as if these things ever are) or will it cost too much or is there a greater reward for raising the child (i.e. a cure for cancer). So in reality your asking me the price of a human life. the answer then becomes obvious: far more than anyone/company/government/anything could ever pay, for every early death in this war, in this world, for every early death from car accidents or murder or ‘shit happens’ there is a deficit on the books of the universe; Gods cheque book is in the red.
“Officer! He pointed a loaded question at me with intent to pull the trigger, to drop the hammer!”
I hate pointless pointed questions.
This is Stray Dog's dog house 