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From euthanasia to infanticide:
The Dutch approach to severely sick newborns
By Fr. Joseph Tham
Nicky Chapman was born in 1961 with a rare condition called brittle
bone disease. During her birth alone she suffered 50 fractures. Doctors
told her parents that she would be blind, deaf, unable to communicate
and with severely diminished mental functions. They believed that
her quality of life would be so poor that her life would not be worth
living. The doctors suggested that she be put into a home and sent
her away to die.
Under a recently proposed guideline in Holland, if doctors at the
hospital think that a child suffers unbearably from a terminal condition,
they have the authority to end the child’s life. Known as the
Groningen protocol, it was published by Dr. Eduard Verhagen and Pieter
J. J. Sauer in the New England Journal of Medicine. If this were in
place back in 1961, Nicky would probably not have survived.
Luckily, her parents did not take the doctors’ advice and brought
Nicky home. Despite the 600 fractures in her life and a short stature
of 2ft 9in, she grew up, obtained education and work. In fact, Nicky
Chapman managed to become the first person with a congenital disability
to be appointed to the British House of Lords in October last year.
The Groningen protocol seeks to create the legal framework to actively
end the lives of newborns suffering from incurable diseases or extreme
deformities. Conditions cited in the paper are very premature births
and severe cases of spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa (a rare blister-forming
skin disease).
The Netherlands boast the most liberal laws on euthanasia in the world.
Voluntary euthanasia was legalized in 2001, with the condition that
the patient “suffers hopelessly and unbearably” without
reasonable prospect of resolution. Those between the ages of 12 and16
must obtain parental approval.
These authors believed that life-ending measures can be acceptable
in these cases when the child’s medical team and independent
doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for
improvement, and when the parents consent to it.
It is alarming that four such killings have already taken place at
the Groningen hospital, where lethal doses of sedatives were pumped
into terminally ill babies. Although these cases had been reported
to government authorities, no legal charges were pressed against the
hospital or the doctors.
Allowing this practice to continue can set a very dangerous precedent,
where infanticide may become legalized. As the abortion debate has
shown, proponents of abortion have first lobbied this for “hard
cases” such as rape or anencephaly. Once the extreme was permitted,
it did not take long before abortion became legal on demand.
On this ethical slippery slope, if infants could be killed for their
supposedly low quality of life, one could eventually justify killing
for less severe conditions. As Dutch ethicist Jochemsen wrote, “Hard
cases make bad laws. As soon as a law is passed, it will expand the
number of those who are considered extreme cases.”
Along with infanticide, this protocol would also pave the way for
eugenic practices.
As prenatal diagnosis becomes routine, when some genetic disease or
congenital deformity is discovered, more often than not abortion is
the option. This Dutch protocol can become an extension of the eugenic
practice of killing deformed newborns not previously detected in utero.
It is not so surprising when one hears academics such as Peter Singer,
Chair of Ethics at Princeton, advocating infanticide. In his book
Should the Baby Live, Singer suggests that “a period of 28 days
after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having
the same right to life as others… and would allow a couple to
decide that it is better not to continue with a life that has begun
very badly.”
Since euthanasia became legal in Holland, there has been a decl |
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