There are so many better examples to choose from that don't strike a personal nerve (at least, personal to this extent) with any of the audience. Or if your audience hasn't had this experience, it's a moot example that they can't really relate to.
First, the major one. Yes, it is an insensitive example so a better one should be one.
Secondly, regarding your comment regarding progress, human progress is also not linear. It's not even constantly and universally pointing in the right direction (there are frequent regressions, some bigger than others), let alone advancing at a constant speed.
TL;DR: I am letting you know how this example made me feel. Take it any way you want.
It's so much easier for me to process any realist take on something that may have concerned my own health or my parents' health (we've all had serious health conditions), but shouts of the crowd "hey, we are empathizing" when it comes to premature babies makes me gulp (and my kid is doing great: what about those whose isn't?). Why don't we use kids with serious, life threatening conditions as examples too? Because those examples are too emotionally taxing.
It exactly feels like coming from someone who has not had a premature baby (or had a low risk one, as >80% of them are: babies coming out at 36 or even 33 weeks of gestation have a very low risk of any developmental issues and have high chances of survival, yet are still called "premature" — their parents are unlikely to have heard phrases like "it's so-and-so, you probably understand what this means" or "may become blind in a matter of days/hours", even though they've experienced a lot of psychological stress too).
If the goal is to trigger an emotional response, I think this is the wrong one. If the goal is to trigger a rational response, then anybody with a first-hand experience is going to have a hard time.
I am simply calling it out as I see it: find a better example, please.
With all due respect, and not taking anything away from your painful experience, I don't think a "better example" needs to be found. Why? The incubator analogy works precisely because it is so relatable—even to those who do not have kids. We should not rob people of such powerful analogies.
People shouldn't feel like they have to carefully walk on eggshells to use such analogies, all in the fear of offending someone. I hope you don't parse me wrong.
Whether someone cares for that or not is, just the same, in their court.
This entire discussion seems to have turned into whether I should be even expressing what someone saying made me feel. If that's truly useless, I am totally socially inept (I am probably not far off), so that's a useful learning too.
