What is it with these so-called "bioethicists" and their disdain for human life? According to Peter Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton University, "Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time." Hence, they're disposable. Disposable?
- NRO by Kathryn Jean Lopez
Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all."
(...) Infant euthanasia (Have you ever imagined seeing those two words together?) is the practice Singer is discussing. And don't confuse it with abortion. We're talking out-of-the-womb, mom-has-delivered, right-here-with-you-and-me babies. Where's it happening? In Europe and the Netherlands, specifically — although word of it is slowly spreading. In Holland, the Associated Press reports that "at least five newborn mercy killings occur for every one reported."
(...) "Mercy" is the keyword. Learning that your newborn has a fatal or potentially fatal illness must be an indescribably painful experience for a parent. But consider the added anguish of a doctor talking you into being "merciful" by ending your child's life.
And what determines merciful, anyway? That term is a bit vague in this context, as is most of the language advocating infant euthanasia.
(...) Writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, two doctors from the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands confessed that "it is difficult to define" who, among infants, can or should be eliminated. Babies, obviously, can't tell you their pain is unbearable, so it becomes incumbent on "parents and medical experts" to determine what "hopeless" means.
cross posted at hyscience
Why are we discussing this in terms of Europe? The first case has occurred here in the US. In Texas in fact. While we were all focused on the plight of Terri, a baby in Houston, TX was removed from life support in spite of the objections from his mother. The law was signed in 1999 by then govenor now President Bush. In Texas, they won't have to go through all that occurred in Terri's case. In Texas, if you are poor and/or uninsured your plug can be pulled when the doctors decide that your care is to expensive. This baby had a name, Sunny and deserves to have his life AND DEATH known. President Bush wouldn't have had to fly back to Washington to save Sunny, but then this poor black baby just wasn't as newsworthy, was he? How can a man, that says he does not believe abortion should be legal, turn around and pass a law that allows the family to be barred from the decison of life support?