My take is, if you live to be old, your life has been fulfilled... but I grew up in an ancestor-worshiping society, not a child-centered one as here. Premature death = death before you're old, in that case. One of the points of human life is to live to be old. This isn't Darwinian, FYI.

Science may well never eradicate disease, but we'll give it a run for its money!

And I'm not worried about overpopulation; I'm worried about distribution of resources.

Humanity's specialty is "violating the natural order of things" - agriculture, domestication, vaccinations, etc. That is natural to us... we are ruining our gene pool anyway, and have been for millennia, by protecting the weak, making glasses and canes and wheelchairs, having kids while diabetics or albino, and so on - we are hardly being Darwinian when we are being kind. But I'd still prefer a human society that takes care of people (defined as having been born already). If it comes to a crunch between the "rights" of a fetus against the "rights" of a woman, I'd vote for the woman every time. No unwanted pregnancies! No unwanted children! (I have a fantasy where a pregnant woman could legally register a fetus as "wanted" - then (a)she has to wear bright Baby On Board clothing so people know she's being considered, for legal purposes, 2 people; (b) she can get in trouble for behaviors that are known to damage fetuses; (c) somebody who assaults her and causes a miscarriage is then guilty of infanticide; (d)if she miscarries she can have a funeral. This allows for early miscarriage of embryos, which is so very common, not to be an issue, no pun intended. It also allows for abortion of unwanted pregnancies, especially in the first trimester. Later abortions could still be chosen if there was something wrong with the fetus such that a "wrongful birth" would otherwise occur. I haven't thought it all the way through, but that's the approach I'd like to see taken. Coupled with, of course, and pun intended, enough education that women would know if they were pregnant, had access to contraception, and used it.)

But when you get into the patronage of research, now, you're getting somewhere. Have you read State of Fear? Crichton goes into a whole thing about how funding should be as blind as design. Yes indeedy. But I'd rather have science than superstition, even if it isn't the best science we could have come up with.

How would preventing abortions help the pension crisis? Or do you mean making them illegal (now, they are just unobtainable in most states)?