Posted on 12/17/2014 5:57:24 AM PST by wagglebee
The late Richard John Neuhaus famously wrote of bioethicists:
Thousands of medical ethicists and bioethicists, as they are called, professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on the way to becoming the justifiable until it is finally established as unexceptionable.
In my over 20 years engaged in trying to push back against the bioethics movement, I have found that to be an absolutely accurate formula.
Take, as one example, dehydrating the cognitively devastated to death–a slow and potentially agonizing death. That was once unthinkable, it became debatable in the 1980s, and is now unexceptional.
Allowing infanticide has now reached the “debatable on the way to justifiable” stage–with some of the world’s most prominent bioethicists and medical/bioethical journals publishing apologies for infanticide. (Remember the “after-birth abortion” article in the Journal of Medical Ethics two years ago?)
Latest example: The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery hosted a debate on infanticide–See!–in which the prominent Canadian bioethicist Udo Schuklenk argues in favor of the propriety of infanticide.
Killing severely ill or dying babies is okay, don’t you know, because human beings don’t have intrinsic dignity. What matters is the “quality of life ethic.” From, “Physicians Can Justifiably Euthanize Certain Severely Impaired Neonates:”
A quality-of-life ethic requires us to focus on a neonate’s current and future quality of life as relevant decision making criteria. We would ask questions such as: Does this baby have the capacity for development to an extent that will allow him or her to have a life and not merely be alive? If we reach the conclusion that it would not, we would have reason to conclude that his life is not worth living.
That is an entirely subjective question, isn’t it? It’s in the eye of the utilitarian beholder.
Schuklenk might say–I don’t know–that only a baby that would never be conscious should be killed. But the authors of Journal of Medical Ethics article opined that Down babies could be killed because they can be aborted.
Netherlander doctors have killed babies with spina bifida and other physical disabilities. Once human value becomes subjective, the extent of the right to life is reduced to who has the power to decide.
Sometimes when this issue comes up, opponents yell, “But that’s what the Nazis did!” NO. That is what the Nazis allowed doctors who wanted infanticide to do.
German infanticide was driven by doctors and what we would now call bioethicists. Indeed, the very first infanticide, Baby Knaur, would almost surely receive the Okay-to-Kill rubber stamp from Schuklenk. From my book Culture of Death, quoting three notable history books that focused on the case:
The first known German government-approved infanticide, the killing of Baby Knauer, occurred in early 1939. The baby was blind and had a leg and an arm missing.
Baby Knauer’s father was distraught at having a disabled child. So, he wrote to Chancellor Hitler requesting permission to have the infant “put to sleep.” Hitler had been receiving many such requests from German parents of disabled babies over several years and had been waiting for just the right opportunity to launch his euthanasia plans.
The Knauer case seemed the perfect test case. He sent one of his personal physicians, Karl Rudolph Brandt, to investigate. Brandt’s instructions were to verify the facts, and if the child was disabled as described in the father’s letter, he was to assure the infant’s doctors that they could kill the child without legal consequence. With the Fuhrer’s assurance, Baby Knauer’s doctors willingly murdered their patient at the request of his father. [Burleigh, Death and Deliverance, pp. 95-96; Lifton, Nazi Doctors, pp. 50-51; Gallagher, By Trust Betrayed, pp. 95-96.]
Brandt was hanged at Nuremberg. These crimes came from a rejection of intrinsic human dignity and accepting a subjective quality of life ethic.
Schuklenk also spills the beans that infanticide will be about money:
The question of whether it would be a wise allocation of scarce health care resources to undertake the proposed surgical procedures invariably arises in circumstances such as this.
Continuing life-prolonging care for the infant would be futile, it would constitute a waste of scarce health care resources.
Health care resources ought to be deployed where they can actually benefit patients by improving their quality of life. This cannot be achieved in the scenario under consideration.
Several years ago at Princeton, I castigated the university for giving infanticide proponent Peter Singer one of the most prestigious endowed chairs in the world. He was brought to Princeton not in spite of believing in the moral propriety of killing babies (because they are supposedly not “persons”) but because of it.
In the Q and A part of the presentation, one professor objected, saying he liked academic freedom and the interplay of ideas. In reply, I asked if Princeton would ever bring the racist Noble Laureate William Shockley to the university, regardless of his expertise in physics. He said, honestly, “No.”
Exactly. Racism is beyond the pale–and properly so. The fact that Shockley’s expertise would have had nothing to do with racial politics wouldn’t have mattered. He would have been unemployable at any major university.
Infanticide is the same bigotry aimed at different victims. It is now considered a respectable and debatable proposition in bioethics.
If we don’t keep pushing back very hard, it will, one day, become unexceptional.
It’s ridiculous. It reminds me of the time that some poster outed me for not being a Republican. :)
It just frustrates me when I read an interesting article dealing with issues that are near and dear to my heart (life) and one of the first posts comes out of left field and blames libertarians.
That is ridiculous.
If we are going to start assigning blame to the callus disregard for life in society, I would put Democrats first, Republicans next, then independents and libertarians somewhere way down the line. The two most prominent small “l” libertarians in the past 10 years are the Pauls and they both are staunchly pro-life.
Most of those who start blaming libertarians for every problem are usually Republican apologists. If you are not, then I am sorry I associated you with them.
In more civilized times, we tried and hung people who instituted this on a massive scale.
Now they get funding.
My child was a high risk pregnancy. Spent 72 days in the NICU. She was one of the lucky kids. How many of her former NICU mates would this kill?
It didn't come out of left field, libertarians are very much aligned with the left on this matter and it's based on utilitarianism. Many may not realize it, but libertarianism uses Utopian collectivism as its foundation. When many pro-life topics come up, the first thing the libertarians on FR want to know is how much it is costing them.
If we are going to start assigning blame to the callus [sic] disregard for life in society,
As I said, utilitarianism is at the root of this and utilitarianism is a basic tenet of libertarianism.
The two most prominent small “l” libertarians in the past 10 years are the Pauls and they both are staunchly pro-life.
NEITHER of the Pauls are pro-life!
The Pauls are pro-choice-by-state when it comes to abortion. Sure, they might be "personally opposed" to abortion, but even the most outspoken champions of abortion make that claim.
The Pauls are 100% committed to the false and anti-Constitutional ideal of "states rights." They are the ultimate statists because they will ALWAYS put the supposed "rights" of the states above our Constitutional rights.
America has already experimented with "states rights" and allowing each state to decide who is and who isn't a person, and resolving that experiment nearly destroyed our Republic.
Most of those who start blaming libertarians for every problem are usually Republican apologists. If you are not, then I am sorry I associated you with them.
I'm not. You can be assured that I will attack ANYONE who contradicts my beliefs with equal vigor.
Horrible.
Self ping
Exactly. Eugenics by any other name is still eugenics, murder of those deemed untermensch (under men.)
I am sure there are some people that live lives of great luxury would consider my simple life as not worth living.
Well said my FRiend!
One of the culture of death's main focuses since WWII has been revise their terminology in order to make the public more susceptible to their evil agenda. To that end we hear terms like: choice, death with dignity, end of life, vegetative, reproductive rights, etc.
They can revise all they like. Eventually they will kill the wrong person or a loved one of the wrong person. The blowback will end eugenics for another few decades. Because no one will dare mention it openly.
Until we forget again.
The media and politic are very careful to refer to an unborn child as a fetus. In that way, they are not killing humans.
It's the same effect of the Nazis calling Jews, Gypsies and so on untermenschen. Thereby they were not killing humans.
The Islamicists also have a word for those who do not believe the same way they do: kafir. Likewise, they are not beheading a human but merely a kafir.
We must never, ever, let anyone control the language.
They will do what libs always do. Push forward until someone stops them hard. Stalin did it. French kings did it, Hitler did it. History is filled with libs or proto libs doing it. Eventually they overextend and they get smashed back to reality. but not before doing untold damage and evil. Because people think liberals are just like other people.
Libs barely qualify as people. They are evil made flesh.
Many of them even steer clear of the word fetus (they probably realized that most people are aware that it doesn't remain a fetus forever) and call the baby a "clump of cells" like it's a cyst or something. Their intent is to convince women that killing a baby requires far less consideration than changing hairstyles.
SOME pseudo-libertarians anchor their beliefs in utilitarianism (although I believe it is far fewer than you do) but MANY libertarians anchor their beliefs in INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY the right of which is given to us by God.
Those of us who anchor our beliefs in individual liberty and recognize the baby as an individual, desire to do everything we can to protect their rights.
Too bad we don't have more libertarians like Paul in government.
You are entitled to your own beliefs but not your own facts.
Highly unlikely, but I will play along just to see where this goes.
SOME pseudo-libertarians anchor their beliefs in utilitarianism (although I believe it is far fewer than you do) but MANY libertarians anchor their beliefs in INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY the right of which is given to us by God.
They believe that liberty stems from the total absence of law. They do not realize that the logical end result of libertarianism MUST be anarchy.
Those of us who anchor our beliefs in individual liberty and recognize the baby as an individual, desire to do everything we can to protect their rights.
So why all the talk of "states rights"?
....Just like Rand Paul
You mean this guy?
Sen. Paul said, "My personal religious belief is that life begins at the very beginning." But, he explained, America is evenly divided between "all life and no abortion, or all abortion and no life... I think the law will come down in between." Later, he said, "The country is in the middle, [and] we're not changing any of the laws until the country is persuaded otherwise."
America already has a law that protects life from the moment of conception, it's called the Constitution.
In any event, Rand Paul's proposal is filled with the typical "and then you can kill the baby" loopholes that pro-choicers always include:
BLITZER: So, just to be precise, if you believe life begins at conception, which I suspect you do believe that, you would have no exceptions for rape, incest, the life of the mother, is that right?PAUL: Well, I think that once again puts things in too small of a box. What I would say is that there are thousands of exceptions. You know, I'm a physician and every individual case is going to be different, and everything is going to be particular to that individual case and what's going on with that mother and the medical circumstances of that mother.
I would say that after birth, you know, we've decided that when life begins, we have decided that we don't have exceptions for one- day-old or six-month-olds. We don't ask where they came from or how they came into being, but it is more complicated because the rest of it depends on the definition of when life comes in. So, I don't think it's a simple as checking box and saying exceptions or no exceptions.
I've been there at the beginning of life. I've held one-pound babies in my hand that I examined their eyes. I've been there at the end of life.
And there are a lot of decisions that are made privately by families and their doctors that really won't -- the law won't apply to, but I think it's important that we not be flippant one way or the other and pigeon hole and say, oh, this person doesn't believe in any sort of discussion between family. And so, I don't know if there's a simple way to put me in a category on any of that.
BLITZER: Well, it sounds like you believe in some exceptions.
PAUL: Well, there's going to be, like I say, thousands of extraneous situations where the life of the mother is involved and other things that are involved.
So, I would say that each individual case would have to be addressed and even if there were eventually a change in the law, let's say, the people came more to my way of thinking, it's still be a lot of complicated things that the law may not ultimately be able to address in the early stages of pregnancy that would have to be part of what occurs between the physician and the woman and the family.
Too bad we don't have more libertarians like Paul in government.
Like his father?
"Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, but not because the Supreme Court presumed to legalize abortion rather than ban it. Roe was wrongly decided because abortion simply is not a constitutional issue."“Under the 9th and 10th amendments, all authority over matters not specifically addressed in the Constitution remains with state legislatures. Therefore the federal government has no authority whatsoever to involve itself in the abortion issue. So while Roe v. Wade is invalid, a federal law banning abortion across all 50 states would be equally invalid.”
You are entitled to your own beliefs but not your own facts.
My belief is that the Pauls are far more pro-abortion than they let on; however, the FACTS, as shown above, paint a fairly accurate picture.
Are Libertarians liberal or conservative?
Libertarians are neither. Unlike liberals or conservatives, Libertarians advocate a high degree of both personal and economic liberty. For example, Libertarians advocate freedom in economic matters, so we’re in favor of lowering taxes, slashing bureaucratic regulation of business, and charitable — rather than government — welfare.
*But Libertarians are also socially tolerant. We won’t demand laws or restrictions on other people who we may not agree because of personal actions or lifestyles.
Think of us as a group of people with a “live and let live” mentality and a balanced checkbook.*
In a sense, Libertarians “borrow” from both sides to come up with a logical and consistent whole — but without the exceptions and broken promises of Republican and Democratic politicians. That’s why we call ourselves the Party of Principle.
So sad but true, dear brother in Christ!
Are you telling me that you don’t support an exception for the LIFE of the mother? That is all that he said in the quote you provided.
I don’t support an exception for rape or the health of the mother but I have never even heard anyone seriously say they are against an exception for the LIFE of the mother. That would be an instance like he describes where the family would have to make that decision...”Do we save the mother OR the child?”
I happen to agree with Ron Paul that a federal law which said, “No one can have abortions” would be unconstitutional. This is why I agree with Rand Paul in advocating for federal legislation clarifying that the 14th amendment applies to those in the womb. That would be the Constitutional way to protect the life of the unborn.
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That's incorrect.
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