Those are a couple of tough ones, TB.

I suffered a negative visceral reaction to the Guardian article about the girl whose parents "infantilized" her, yet it's hard to articulate exactly why. The parents' argument that it made no difference to someone whose mind was fixed forever at 3 months has logic behind it. And they claim that the decision was easy, when conventional wisdom would lead one to expect that they'd have found it agonizing in the extreme. I have a sense that I just can't judge, and I have to defer to their judgment.

The hypothetical about the distinction between abortion and intrauterine modification is just as difficult, if not more so, and here too I'm not sure that I can discern an answer. Tentatively, with some trepidation, I might suggest that the difference is that, once the decision has been made to proceed and allow the child to be born, then the consideration about allowing that person to develop with as little interference and infringement on potential as possible comes into play. But it does seem like splitting hairs, doesn't it?

I think both cases provide examples of why it's best to allow individuals to make these decisions, and not impose a one-size-fits-all answer from the top down. Laws don't make fine distinctions; "the law is an ass", said Oliver Wendell Holmes. I found myself trying to reason by analogy, that the difficult question under consideration could be viewed as an outcome like child abuse, and be more comprehensible in that form, and perhaps that's all anyone can do. The analogy they end up with is likely the one that reflects their own personal values, as a proxy for the original question. The law can't substitute for that process.