{"id":4768,"date":"2006-11-06T09:57:57","date_gmt":"2006-11-06T09:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/no-slippery-slope-no-none-at-all.html"},"modified":"2006-11-06T09:57:57","modified_gmt":"2006-11-06T09:57:57","slug":"no-slippery-slope-no-none-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/no-slippery-slope-no-none-at-all.html","title":{"rendered":"No slippery slope, no none at all."},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a myth:<\/p>\n

We’ll take care of it – if you only let us:<\/a><\/p>\n

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ONE of Britain\u2019s royal medical colleges is calling on the health profession to consider permitting the euthanasia of seriously disabled newborn babies. <\/p>\n

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 \u201cactive euthanasia\u201d should be considered for the overall good of families, to spare parents the emotional burden and financial hardship of bringing up the sickest babies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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\u201cA very disabled child can mean a disabled family,\u201d it says. \u201cIf 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

Geneticists and medical ethicists supported the proposal \u2014 as did the mother of a severely disabled child \u2014 but a prominent children\u2019s doctor described it as \u201csocial engineering\u201d. <\/p>\n

The college called for \u201cactive euthanasia\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

The college\u2019s submission to the inquiry states: \u201cWe 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is tragic enough, but I think the most frightening thing of all is that the best objection that can be dug up is:<\/p>\n

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but a prominent children\u2019s doctor described it as \u201csocial engineering\u201d.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Wesley Smith:<\/a><\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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

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. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a myth: We’ll take care of it – if you only let us: ONE of Britain\u2019s 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNo slippery slope, no none at all. - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/no-slippery-slope-no-none-at-all.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No slippery slope, no none at all. - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Just a myth: We’ll take care of it – if you only let us: ONE of Britain\u2019s royal medical colleges is calling on the health profession to consider permitting the euthanasia of seriously disabled newborn babies. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}