I'm probably going to regret posting this on the feminism board but it could be a good thing for some foetuses who might otherwise have been aborted but who actually could live a happy life.
And how will you legislate for that? Who assesses the viability of each fetus in utero, the severity of the disability when a great many effects of the congenital defects are not yet clear until birth?
And who gets to decide which condition qualifies for a termination for medical reasons? What quality of life is acceptable and what isn't? What is happiness? How do you quantify it?
This is a system that denies women agency over their own bodies and hands the power to health care professionals. This might be good for some fetuses, but it is bad for all women. Are you prepared to accept the consequences of such a system?
My sister is severely disabled and the fact that someone could abort a child with her condition makes me feel sick, it's basically saying her life isn't worth living.
No. Nobody is saying that here. What we are saying is that it should be up to the pregnant woman to decide whether she wishes to carry her child to term or whether she wishes to have an abortion. And no one else. You have the freedom to decide for yourself. Allow me the same option.
I do think abortion should be safe, free and legal but I wish we could have a more nuanced discussion than 'my body my choice' and a recognition that more than one life is being weighed here.
There is only one life being weighed here. That of the pregnant woman's, who carries a potential life inside of her. The person who is already alive must have agency in this situation, otherwise you deny her personhood.
It is saying that the life of the woman who chooses to abort a foetus like her is more important than that of the foetus, ie her life has less value.
Yes, that is correct. The person who is already alive is worth more than a future person. Whether the future person has a congenital birth defect or not has no impact on this. Whether the future person is perfectly healthy or not, the life of the person independently alive already matters more. And without the pregnant woman, that future person would never be born. It grows inside of her, it is made from her, it is nourished by her body. She is the life giver and so it should be her choice to give this life.
Incidentally, if you talk to women who live with extreme restrictions on abortion, such rules as you seem to yearn for inevitably make an already heartbreaking situation an unbearably cruel one.
Talk to women in the States who in some places have to petition the local community to permit them to access a termination for medical reasons. Who can then be told - at a public meeting where they had to have a hearing in front of the whole town - to carry the baby to term so as to donate its organs when it dies after birth. Even when that baby isn't viable precisely because not one organ has developed as it should. Of course, those in charge of the council didn't really care about that. They also don't care about these children if they survive after birth.
I've spoken to a woman like that, and others like her. Not one decides to have a termination for medical reasons lightly or without due regard.