Posted on 11/12/2006 6:06:35 AM PST by NYer
The Church of England believes doctors should be given the right to withhold treatment from some seriously disabled newborn babies in exceptional circumstances, The Observer reported.
The view comes in a submission from the church to a British medical ethics committee looking at the implications of keeping severely premature babies alive through technological advances, the weekly newspaper said.
The Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler, was said to have written that "it may in some circumstances be right to choose to withhold or withdraw treatment, knowing it will possibly, probably, or even certainly result in death".
Last week, Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists called for a debate on whether deliberate medical intervention to cause the death of severely disabled new-born babies should be legalised.
The college said it did not necessarily favour the move -- which prompted accusations of "social engineering" from disabled groups -- but felt the issue should be discussed.
Its views were expressed in a similar submission to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which was set up two years ago and which is due to publish its finding later this week.
The Observer reported that the church, led by the head of the world's Anglicans Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, could not accept the view that the life of any baby is not worth living.
But it added there were "strong proportionate reasons" for "overriding the presupposition that life should be maintained", the weekly added.
The high price of keeping very premature and sick babies alive with invasive medical treatments as well as the consequences for parents should also be taken into consideration, the bishop reportedly says.
"There may be occasions where, for a Christian, compassion will override the 'rule' that life should inevitably be preserved," the south London bishop is said to have written.
"Disproportionate treatment for the sake of prolonging life is an example of this."
The church reportedly said it would only back withholding or withdrawing treatment if all reasonable alternatives had been fully considered "so that the possibly lethal act would only be performed with manifest reluctance".
When several co-workers complained and pitched a fit over various issues of late, they came clean and admitted they weren't registered, nor did they care to. They would rather complain than make any effort to make their opinions heard. They were just too busy with their lives to even try. They were unaware they could even register by mail. Needless to say, they weren't happy when I told them they were as big a problem as the al-queda/Taliban whacks that are intent on destrying us all. Nor did they appreciate it when I told them that if they were going to remain stupid, it was best they not register or participate.
There is a large pool of idiocy in the nation. It is easily manipulated. It is swayed by any breeze that is pleasing. It is our legacy.
<< (Tiny Blair and the other, some even posing as bishops, priests and as other clergy, fascissocialist heirs and successors of those who once saw to the sanctity of what used to be) The (Holy, Catholic and Apostolic) Church of England believe doctors should be given the right to withhold treatment from some seriously disabled newborn babies .... >>
Post-Christian, once great, now groveling, britain, in which Brussels, Strasbourg and Sharia trump even common sense and basic decency -- and not to even mention, God's Law -- is doomed.
Dissolute, decadent, degenerate, dead -- doomed!
The Church of England is a dead horse. It is time for Anglicans to dismount.
"wrong color eyes...Doctor, kill it."
ping...
Sigh!
You jest but recently, in England, a woman aborted her child because he had a mild cleft lip.
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Eloquently said.
I'm not clear here on what you're talking about. If the baby was dead, then it's a miscarriage, and removing a dead fetus is not abortion. If the baby was alive, then killing it was murder.
Nobody has a right to kill someone else in order to avoid suffering. If that were the case, we would all be dead, for we have all suffered and we have all caused suffering. Dealing with suffering patiently and creatively --- and not destructively --- is how we grow in humanity.
OK... let's remove your brain and leave you on a feeding tube for the rest of your life.
Nature killed this baby. It had no brain and was therefore only "alive" like an amoeba or bacteria strain is alive. The humane thing to do for everyone, family AND baby, would have been to abort it.
If a baby is born without a brain, it will not live long in the natural course of things. There is no reason to commit murder.
There is also no obligation to impose surgery, ventilator, etc. upon a dying baby, or to prolong that death with an array of wires, tubes and pumps. You give ordinary care ---the warmth, the diaper, the nipple, the holding --- for the hours or days that life remains.
My Aunt Frances gave birth to an anencephalic baby, Anneliese. She and her husband and the baby's brother held and loved Anneiliese, who died before the week was out. They loved her as a daughter and sister. They did not butcher her and have her incinerated. They honored her humanity, and their own.
God needs to be the One who decides when the end of each human life will be. We, with our finite minds, cannot get up high enough to see the tapestry that God is creating with all of the threads of each human's life. We cannot see how the threads intertwine or what other threads are touched by the tiny thread of a premature baby. God sees all the threads and He is creating the picture. The other issue is that there is purpose in human suffering. We do not always see the purpose but again, we are looking at it from a finite perspective. The growth of humans happens through pain and suffering. God knows this and allows humans to suffer. Look at the amount of suffering Jesus had to endure to redeem us from our sin. Do we really think that we, as humans, should be spared from suffering?
Another point to consider is that the medical profession has made tremendous progress in treating these "severely premature" babies. The truth is that there are not any good predictors of which ones will live or die and which ones will be disabled and which ones will be perfectly "normal". Neonatologists have seen too many of these babies "beat the odds" and turn out just fine. The last point is that we need to see the financial "cost" of caring for these premature babies (and the elderly) in perspective. In the US last year, we as a population, spent 3 times as much on soda as it cost to care for these babies ($20 billion on the babies, >$60 billion on soda). When we look at the financial cost we need to look at the priorities we place on how we spend our resources. I don't think people really believe that the care of premature babies is less important than soda. But when we discuss the financial impact of the health care decisions we make, we need to look at how much money we are spending on other things in our world and ask ourselves what our priorities for our resources really are.
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