Memes

Neither of those things you described are intentional life-choices that people have planned, so no, it is not the same thing at all.

Why is everyone else responsible for your comfort?

This is a circular argument I've seen a lot of times on this thread (from several people), so I'm going to respond to it just once and then stop engaging here because this whole thread is not convincing anyone. Both sides of this issue believe that that argument supports them:

• Pro-babies think "other passengers should just bring earplugs, I don't have to be responsible for their comfort" (let's leave aside for a moment the question of whether earplugs are actually fully effective against screaming children (they're not) and give this view the benefit of the doubt)
• Anti-babies think "just don't bring the baby on the plane. The whole rest of the plane shouldn't have to adapt to your choices"

The thing is, one of these groups of people is knowingly introducing a factor that will cause distress to hundreds of people and is saying "fuck all of you if you aren't prepared to adapt to my choices", and the other group is saying..."please don't do that". The latter feels way more reasonable to me.

The key point here seems to be that air travel is considered to be a fundamental inalienable right, something which should not and cannot be denied. Parents are saying things like "well without air travel, how are we supposed to go on holiday", to which the answer is...maybe you're not (or you go by car/boat) until the baby's a real human? Maybe that was something you should have thought about before you had a child? Maybe, just maybe, it should be the cultural and social norm that a choice that you made does not permit you to inflict the negative outcomes of that choice on a tube of strangers?