Posted on 11/30/2004 11:17:14 AM PST by Pyro7480
Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies
By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Raising the stakes in an excruciating ethical debate, a hospital in the Netherlands — the first nation to permit euthanasia — recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures in a handful of cases and reporting them to the government.
The announcement last month by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives — a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.
In August, the main Dutch doctors' association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people "with no free will," including children, the severely mentally retarded, and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.
The Health Ministry is preparing its response to the request, a spokesman said, and it may come as soon as December.
Three years ago, the Dutch parliament made it legal for doctors to inject a sedative and a lethal dose of muscle relaxant at the request of adult patients suffering great pain with no hope of relief.
The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.
The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.
Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life such as spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a blistering illness.
The hospital said it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors — but there have been no legal proceedings taken against them.
Catholic organizations and the Vatican have reacted with outrage to Groningen's announcement, and U.S. euthanasia opponents contend that the proposal shows the Dutch have lost their moral compass.
"The slippery slope in the Netherlands has descended already into a vertical cliff," said Wesley J. Smith, a prominent California-based critic, in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Child euthanasia remains illegal everywhere. Experts say doctors outside of Holland do not report cases for fear of prosecution.
"As things are, people are doing this secretly and that's wrong," said Eduard Verhagen, head of Groningen's children's' clinic. "In the Netherlands we want to expose everything, to let everything be subjected to vetting."
According to the Justice Ministry, four cases of child euthanasia were reported to prosecutors in 2003. Two were reported in 2002, seven in 2001 and five in 2000. All the cases in 2003 were reported by Groningen, but some of the cases in other years were from other hospitals.
Groningen estimated the protocol would be applicable in about 10 cases per year in the Netherlands, a country with 16 million people.
Since the introduction of the Dutch law, Belgium has also legalized euthanasia, while in France, legislation to allow doctor-assisted suicide is currently under debate. In the United States, the state of Oregon is alone in allowing physician-assisted suicide, but this is under constant legal challenge.
However, experts acknowledge that doctors euthanize routinely in the United States but that such practice is hidden.
"Measures that might marginally extend a child's life by minutes or hours or days or weeks are stopped. This happens routinely, namely, every day," said Lance Stell, professor of medical ethics at Davidson College and staff ethicist at Carolinas Medical Center in the United States. "Everybody knows that it happens, but there's a lot of hypocrisy. Instead, people talk about things they're not going to do."
More than half of all deaths occur under medical supervision, so it's really about management and method of death, Stell said.
Pro-life ping!
Yep...the commies and the muzzies are teamates...playing for the same false god
Sounds like something right out of the Third Reich.
This should be called a "post birth abortion".
At least the Muslims have the (small) sense not to abort their kids. But I think that's more for propagation purposes than anything else.
And keep praying.
If they aborted them they couldn't be used as suicide bombers.
Princeton's Dr. Singer would be proud of 'em.....
Specifically, he is referring to FEEDING and HYDRATING kids. "Damaged" kids are starved to death regularly.
As long as the procedure is illegal and doctors run the risk of prosecution and ostracism for carrying it out, there will be few cases of euthanasia and only in the most extreme situations.
Once it's legal and all aboveboard, they will start killing folks left and right (it's already happened in the Netherlands with the elderly and the terminally ill.) With no restrictions and no shame, the floodgates open. Babies will be killed for convenience and to avoid expensive hospital bills, just as the elderly and sick are being killed now to open up hospital beds and hurry up the inheritances of their greedy relatives.
These people have no sense. Truly, once you abandon morality you are prey for stupidity.
My thought exactly...
Dr. Josef Mengele is still alive and kicking, 26 years after his death.
(We'd already pretty much ruled out Princeton, my alma mater and home of the infamous Singer.)
Tell me there are no crazies like this at Washington & Lee! Please!
Good God have mercy on us and deliver us from our own evil!
"Doctor, grandmother's quality of life is so low, we can't see her recovering and we hate to see her suffer like this. Can you do something?"
"If necessary, we can end her suffering with dignity. When can we do it?"
"Not until next week. She's on holiday in Madrid"
Only 26 years!?
So what's the solution here? To force the parents to quickly exhaust their life savings paying for a life that will be lived in pain and suffering and possibly on life support and constant medication? Or to hand the children over to the gov't and let the Nanny State raise them?
I know that I wouldn't want my tax dollars to go towards such health care expenses.
I don't know the answer but I know not to judge until I've walked a mile in one of those parents' shoes.
This is exactly what Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop described in their book, "Whatever Happened to the Human Race?"
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