Quote:I know a family who`s son shook a baby to death as a result of his own drug induced brain damage. This happened quite a few years ago, and the perp isn`t even aware of his crime, due to his self inflicted brain damage. It costs a fortune to keep this thing alive and I just don`t see the point.
Frankly I am a little surprised to see anyone still use such an argument anymore.
It is hidebound nonsense to think that you can apply value judgements about whose life is worth preserving, and whose is not, based upon subjective value assessments like someone having a drug damaged brain.
It is what the whole Master Race philosophy was about, and that did not play out really well did it.
I appreciate the fact that we do have people that do hideous things, due to the fact that they are sick in the head, and if we follow your line of thinking, we just should kill everyone who is sick in the head.
There is the possibility that we will, as a society, get to a point where certain, extremely profound disabilities are considered kinder to euthanise than to artificially support, but the protocols that would need to be put in place before that ever became acceptable, are monumental.
The simple fact is that as a criminal act, someone with reduced capacity to make a conscious moral decision, is far less deserving of receiving the death penalty, than someone with all their faculties.