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    Wednesday, April 13, 2005

    Disturbing Trend: About those "rare cases" of infant euthanasia in the Netherlands:

    Nearly half the newborn babies who died in Flanders over a recent year-long period were helped to die by their doctors, a new study reported yesterday.

    ....The study, published in The Lancet, examined the deaths of every baby who died within a year of birth in Flanders between August 1999 and July 2000.

    The results of a survey on the causes of death were stark: paediatricians who responded to the survey admitted they had taken 'end of life' decisions in more than half the cases.

    Most commonly, that involved withholding or withdrawing treatment because physicians believed the baby had no real chance of survival or the baby had no chance of a 'bearable future'.


    Whatever a "bearable future" might be.

    UPDATE/CORRECTION: Ignorant American that I am, I should point out that Flanders is in Belgium, as this reader reminds me:

    In case someone is rude about Americans having a poor grasp of geography: Flanders is in Belgium, not The Netherlands.

    But the Belgians are perhaps as bad. A few years ago we were having one of our occasional debates about abortion here in Ireland. An expat living in Brussels wrote to our national paper of record that Downs Syndrome has almost disappearedĀ there because of Belgian abortion laws.
    And you might have a look at this British story


    The British story is about a late term abortion that gives us an idea of what a "bearable life" might mean:

    Julia Millington from the ProLife Alliance said she was disappointed with the decision not to prosecute.

    'We are alarmed by the reasons given by the CPS but, with the eugenic mentality of medicine in the UK, it is perhaps not surprising that two doctors would determine that the best destiny for a seven-month baby with a cleft palate is to be killed.
     

    posted by Sydney on 4/13/2005 08:28:00 PM 0 comments

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