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Kawoomba comments on Is Politics the Mindkiller? An Inconclusive Test - Less Wrong Discussion
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(Assuming we rely on sapience as the chief criterion for privileging life, as you seem to imply)
You are also not in a sapient-testable state when you're under the effects of anesthesia, or in deep sleep.
You might object that you will be in such a state again once you wake up - in other words, that you have the future potential to be in a sapient state.
That, however, would also apply to a human baby, albeit given another time horizon, while it would not apply (to the same degree) to many other mammals, whose individual future potential is much more limited.
Why would you be worthy of protection (e.g. while in a medical coma) based on regaining testable sapience in a matter of weeks - or months - if a baby weren't?
Our local surroundings could be made into a dense volume of self-replicating computronium hosting as many bare-minimum sapients as possible, but only a few people here would argue that it's morally imperative to carry that out to full term.
Another difference is that the mature sapient has typically specified, or would specify, that it should be reinstated in advance, and works within the framework of society. If the baby survives any sort of abuse it undergoes until it is sapient, then it might be entitled to some damages, but until then, it lacks self-ownership and is susceptible to destruction by its possessors.
Well, in point of fact I don't feel sure that "For The People Who Are Still Alive" works here. But if we end a consciousness that has already started, even if it's currently paused, that certainly appears to reduce its "average lifespan". We can infer that this decision procedure would reduce the chance of a random real human satisfying his/her desires for more life, if the argument in the linked post works at all.