Just a myth:

We’ll take care of it – if you only let us:

ONE of Britain’s royal medical colleges is calling on the health profession to consider permitting the euthanasia of seriously disabled newborn babies.

The proposal by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology is a reaction to the number of such children surviving because of medical advances. The college is arguing that “active euthanasia” should be considered for the overall good of families, to spare parents the emotional burden and financial hardship of bringing up the sickest babies.

“A very disabled child can mean a disabled family,” it says. “If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making, even preventing some late abortions, as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome.”

Geneticists and medical ethicists supported the proposal — as did the mother of a severely disabled child — but a prominent children’s doctor described it as “social engineering”.

The college called for “active euthanasia” of newborns to be considered as part of an inquiry into the ethical issues raised by the policy of prolonging life in newborn babies. The inquiry is being carried out by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.

The college’s submission to the inquiry states: “We would like the working party to think more radically about non-resuscitation, withdrawal of treatment decisions, the best interests test and active euthanasia as they are ways of widening the management options available to the sickest of newborns.”

Initially, the inquiry did not address euthanasia of newborns as this is illegal in Britain. The college has succeeded in having it considered. Although it says it is not formally calling for active euthanasia to be introduced, it wants the mercy killing of newborn babies to be debated by society.

This is tragic enough, but I think the most frightening thing of all is that the best objection that can be dug up is:

but a prominent children’s doctor described it as “social engineering”.

If we can’t do any better than that – if we have lost all sense of an individual human life as precious, and not ours to dispense with – then there’s really nothing to argue about anymore except who, what and when.

Wesley Smith:

Apparently a bioethics think tank is looking into the issue. Oh joy. Maybe they’ll recommend that the babies be used in medical experiments and organ harvesting since they are going to be thrown out anyway.

Of course, the Dutch have leapt to support the idea. According to two studies in the Lancet, neonatologists and pediatricians already kill about 8% of all infants who die in the Netherlands,a sorry figure that another Lancet study shows that Flanders now equals.

Doctors and bioethicists are reviving the concept of life unworthy of life. Oh, they don’t term it so crassly. But what we say isn’t what counts: It is what we do. How fast people who should know better have forgotten the lessons of history.