Posted on 11/30/2004 9:13:52 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
A HOSPITAL in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, before revealing it had already begun carrying out the procedures.
The announcement last month by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalise euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives.
Euthanasia opponents view the prospect with horror while advocates call it a natural evolution.
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.
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 organisations and the Vatican have reacted with outrage to Groningen's announcement, and US euthanasia opponents contend 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.
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 legalised euthanasia. In France, lawmakers today unanimously approved a proposed law to empower the terminally ill to refuse life-extending treatments.
The Senate is expected to examine it next year.
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 euthanise 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 Centre in the United States.
More than half of all deaths occur under medical supervision, so it's really about management and method of death, Prof Stell said.
It's all a natural progression: kill one, kill all.
Pretty much the same article has already been posted twice...
Important article.
You've got the wording correct--natural evolution sounds so much less alarming. This article is chilling. Who calls the shots, where is the line drawn?
Third times a charm. I blogged on it as probably everyone else did as well (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Blogbat). Hugh Hewitt tonight had a great program about this. Refreshingly deep and on point.
Van Gogh's murder woke people up to their terrorist problem, I hope this wakes up the moral God-fearing people there.
I hope this MAKES for some God-fearing people there. Else some of the weaker among them may soon be God-seeing.
Sickening.
This truly is deplorable. I can understand adults defending their right to die if they have a terminal illness, but who is anyone to speak for the right of a dying infant, who cannot speak for his or herself, to die? Shameful. I hope the Dutch Parliament strikes this proposal down.
ping
Saw a NewsMax article with the same information.
The "fools" who believe in a Creator hold that "all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." One notes by contrast that Darwinian natural selection presumes that all humans evolve unequally, are subject to no moral authority, and are therefore free to duke it out for survival by whatever means they see advantageous.
It would seem that unalienable rights, as endowed by a Creator, is a concept so important that, if there wasn't a Creator we would be best off maintaining whatever pretense necessary that there is.
Yes, but its what you get when you recognize any version of a "right to die".
Morality is either arbitrary and constructed by men and thus no rights exist at all and there is no value to life at all or morality is the result of principles willfully set forth by a Creator. If the former is true, we are but pounds of flesh so there is no matter in the case. If the latter be true then we are not our own and have no more right to arbitrarily end our lives as the lives of others who are not causing us harm.
It's now a small step to the following:
"Mr Smith, we know that you're a smoker and that you consume more than two alcoholic drinks per day. To spare you the misery of cancer and cirrhosis (not to mention the fact that you voted Republican in the last four elections) the State has, in its mercy decided....."
Guess the Nazis were just 50 years behind the times. Somewhere in the pits of hell, Hitler has a reason to smile.
What points did he make, if you don't mind telling those who didn't hear him?
Here are links to the other two threads, some good discussion.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1291296/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1291352/posts
I suspect the pro-choice crowd will start defending this another late-term abortion that is necessary for the health of the mother.
Who was it who said "It's only a small step from the "right to die" to the "duty to die"?
Grazie. The show covered the topic of the value of life as devinely breathed verses its value as a matter of happenstance, our slide back into the darkages of the pre-judeo-Christian era and all of its trappings.
I just read your FR page, and welcome. You've come to the right place, and God bless our Aussie allies. We really have so much in common.
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