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Monday, September 13, 2004Research suggests that in about 100 cases each year paediatricians make decisions that result in the death of babies with severe multiple handicaps. Most decisions involve instituting palliative care only, or withholding treatment, but in about 20 of these cases the paediatrician will, after consultation with both parents, choose to end the child’s life with a fatal injection. Only two or three cases are reported each year to a local coroner, even though the current law requires all such cases to be reported. In 10 years, only two cases have reached the courts. First they came for the old people, then they came for the children..... UPDATE: Wesley J. Smith says that this is happening in Belgium, too: Euthanasia consciousness is catching. The Netherlands' neighbor Belgium decided to jump off the same cliff as the Dutch only two years ago. But already, they have caught up with the Dutch in their freefall into the moral abyss. The very first Belgian euthanasia of a person with multiple sclerosis violated the law; and just as occurs routinely in the Netherlands, the doctor involved faced no consequences. Now Belgium is set to legalize neo-pediatric euthanasia. Two Belgian legislators justify their plan to permit children to ask for their own mercy killing on the basis that young people "have as much right to choose" euthanasia as anyone else. Yet, these same children who are supposedly mature enough to decide to die would be ineligible to obtain a driver's license. He explains why they're going down that slippery slope, too. UPDATE II: Michael Fumento looked at euthanasia in the Netherlands in 1991. It's fair to say they've journeyed even further down the slope these days. This quote from an anti-euthanasia Dutch general practioner is well worth remembering: "...[I]t is enormously dangerous to think that doctors, who aren't the most conscientious people in the world, should have the right to kill – and kill unchallenged." He's right. posted by Sydney on 9/13/2004 08:01:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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