Posted on 12/14/2014 8:49:35 PM PST by Morgana
In an article for the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, a well-known Canadian bioethicist – Udo Schuklenk – argues that aborting a child after birth is moral.
Naturally, Schuklenk draws his own arbitrary lines as to when after-birth abortion is moral. He says that when a baby’s life contains “overwhelming pain and suffering,” it would be a moral choice. Schuklenk thinks that even future overwhelming pain and suffering should be considered, not just what a baby might currently be dealing with.
And in a horrifying pro-choice statement, Schuklenk writes:
The parents should be able to freely decide on what would amount to postnatal abortion.
The condition that Schuklenk was originally asked about was a severe case of heterotaxy syndrome. According to the National Post:
The treatment options included: at least three complex surgeries before age five, and possibly more, which at the very best would allow life until teenage years; non-surgical treatment for heart failure permitting survival at most into early childhood; comfort care that would most likely lead to death within a year; and euthanasia.
Schuklenk argued for euthanasia or after-birth abortion. He deemed it morally right to take any chance at life from this child who would have had the opportunity to live for years.
People can argue about whether three surgeries in five years is “overwhelming pain and suffering.” People can debate whether five to seven years is a “long enough” life. But we ought never, ever to allow a person’s life to be taken from them without their choice, simply because we in our all-knowing wisdom decide their life is not worth living.
I know from hospital experiences with my daughter that watching your child suffer is one of the worst – probably the worst – feeling in life. No parent would want to choose to go through that. No parent would desire to subject their child to surgery after surgery or a life on constant medication.
However, should a parent, instead, choose certain death for their child? When we are given the gift of a child who is disabled or who has a defect or a chronic illness, we have to put aside our own desires – and even our innate wishes that our child never suffer – and face what is before us. Yes, it will involve suffering and pain. Life is, unfortunately, plenty full of that.
We may think that choosing death will erase pain and suffering. But then, we are faced with the lifelong realization that we forced the early death of our child. An after-birth abortion or euthanization of a baby is murder, plain and simple. We would be horrified to consider suffocating, poisoning, or otherwise murdering our young children because they were in pain. And yet, too many think it might be moral if a doctor does it. Nothing could be more wrong.
We know it would not be okay to kill our five-year-old if he was suddenly faced with a series of surgeries. We know we would not purposely choose the death of our twelve-year-old if her life prognosis was shortened to a single year. So why do we consider that it might be alright to force the early death of our babies who have only begun to live?
The National Post article also brought attention to “terminal sedation” which is currently practiced more commonly than after-birth abortion on infants.
Terminal sedation involves actively starving and dehydrating an infant, until death occurs. Meanwhile, the infant is given medication and sedated.
Since when is it “moral” to starve a child to death as long as they take medicine that supposedly allows them to sleep through it?
We need to wake up, worldwide, and realize that it is never okay to purposely choose to force death on another human being because we decide their suffering is too great or that their life cannot be long enough.
Forced death is not a moral answer to suffering or pain. When we let each parent, each person, arbitrarily decide how much pain is too much, how many years are enough, and what defect is too great – we unintentionally become the creators of our own Master Race.
From the National Post:
[P]rofessor Gilbert Meilanender of Indiana’s Valparaiso University said patients should not be subjected to aggressive treatment if it is futile, but they should also not be intentionally killed, either. …
“If we simply sweep such children off our doorstep every morning with euthanasia, medicine will never learn better ways to help them and others like them.”
>>The parents should be able to freely decide on what would amount to postnatal abortion.
<<
By his own definition, we can and should apply this “post-birth abortion” to adults who are the 21st century Mengeles.
Sauce for the goose...
Singer from Princeton University has been saying this for a couple of years.
We all knew this was coming.
And before long it wont be the parents who decide.
Aborting babies before birth has opened the door to it being acceptable that they abort post-birth.
Now all that needs to be debated is the time length.
Morality is not defined by the Hegelian Dialectic.
sarc/
And before long it wont be the parents who decide.
Death panels I presume?
So? I find having ‘rats off themselves to lower their CO2 footprint to be moral and an integral part of Social Justice....
I'd like to ask that fool what happens when there's a medical breakthrough 5 years from now that extends life expectancy out to normal spans with good quality of life... Just how would you feel having killed your child today?
There is but a very short step to killing anyone, for any reason, if the state says so.
So, who revoked the Magna Carta? The Declaration of Indepence? The Constitution?
Do we have to do this all over again? Seriously?
Who hasn’t learned from history?
All I can say is it is a very slippery slope this guy is going down. I personally think that who ever decides to euthanize should be open to legal punishment after the fact being subject to punishment varying probation to being exacuted themselves.
This is called murder. The liberal demons call it whatever they want, but it is murder. The logical consequences are mind numbing, staggering. So you can kill a human after birth—aka an “infant, post mortem baby, a fetus, a tri-mester blob,” but it is a human being. What is next, killing any human at any age for the convenience, and expediency of anyone, and foremost the State? Stop this madness!
That’s ridiculous. Society won’t allow it. Sodomites will never try to get married. Wait, what are we taliking about.
I wish there was a Democrat lurking so he could call this Nazi a Nazi!
But it is a woman’s “choice” whether she wants her toddler killed, so yeah, wishful thinking on my part.
Only the TEA party are Nazis due to objections to the left kil— .... choosing.
It’s a moral low, but not as low as we can go. More to come. Think infant burgers.
The definition of abortion is killing and removing the baby before birth. You cannot abort someone already born.
Don't we have that already ?
Well then you could say Hitler and Company performed over 6 million after birth “abortions.”
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