This is How Baby Killing Begins
Now, The Economist has editorialized that it is "brave" for UK doctors to want to open the door to infanticide for disabled babies. Why kill disabled babies, according to the magazine's editorial writers? "Take the case of Charlotte Wyatt, born at 26 weeks in 2003 with severe disabilities. Her doctors wanted to withhold treatment but her parents argued successfully that she should be kept alive. Now the parents have separated and Charlotte is up for adoption. Disabled children are nine times more likely than others to end up in the care of the state."
By all means, we mustn't require the state to care for the weakest and most vulnerable among us. But I wonder if the editorialists know the company they are keeping. Such attitudes are virtually identical to those expressed by Alfred Hocke and Karl Binding in their 1920 book Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life, seen as crucial by historians of the Holocaust in creating the medical culture that led to Germany's murderous eugenic infanticide pogrom.
Never Again? I guess for some, it is, "Never say never." (I will be writing more on this story soon.)
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:56 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
This from a reader:
"I don't have a blogger account, so I can't comment on your blog, but here is an article from just this summer that is once again timely: "British Dr Regrets Suffocating Infant with Anencephaly. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1222822.ece I've been trying to post bits of and links to your relevant commentary on our message board at www.benotafraid.net. As you can imagine, this stuff is deeply disturbing to the parents who need to use the site, but they need to know what kind of fight they may be up against if their doctors do not share their values."
Another reader without a Blogger account writes:
"All I can say is 'Kyrie Elison!' Nazism is alive and well in 2006. It just happens not to have a guy with a short mustache from Austria leading it."
According to savecharlotte.com, the father is trying with all his might to stop the government from terminating his parental rights. Charlotte is back in the hospital and the father is there caring for her.
The government tears this family apart and then its minions in the press want to use that as an excuse to do away with the child.
My head is about to explode.
Alas. Everything old is new again. But our vow must be, not on our watch!
Y'know, it never ceases to amaze me how these people don't bother to get their facts straight:
The doctors _won_ the legal fight regarding Charlotte. They got the DNR order put on her. They never did (fortunately) even press to remove her feeding tube. All they wanted was a DNR. Well, they won every time in the courts, but they kept giving her oxygen and basic care, and she not only survived but developed and did far, far better than they predicted. The DNR still comes back up every time she gets ill, but this story is just factually wrong in its implication that (darn it!) Charlotte is alive today becaue the parents "successfully" did a single thing, legally.
Actually (just a clarification in response to one post) Charlotte has never left the hospital except for a really short visit to her parents' apartment at Christmas one year. Her parents were always in too bad of financial straits even before they separated, and for a long time before that the hospital wouldn't let her go home because her need for oxygen was too high. Now they would let her do so, but the separation and a suicide attempt by her father (dumb move!) have raised questions as to where she should go.
Going back to the news story: She most certainly isn't up for adoption. There's talk of putting her into foster care, but actually the father is _apparently_ being given a chance to prove himself as a care giver right now by taking over her care under supervision of the medics while she's still in the hospital.
(She has a cold, by the way, so those of you who believe in praying might pray for her.)
In any event, it's a funny thing: I recall saying on a different thread that no doubt Charlotte would have been considered a candidate for active euthanasia as an infant. That, based on the _inaccurate_ predictions of the doctors that she would never know anything but pain and so forth. In fact, that's all turned out to be false, and she's basically just a mentally and developmentally underdeveloped little girl with a small head and fragile lungs, now. But hey, these folks won't let a few facts get in their way. After all, disabled 3-year-olds whose parents are separated just really _shouldn't_ be left hanging around. Who cares if she wasn't really slated for a life of unending pain? She's a burden on the state. How much better it would have been if she'd been killed off when much younger!
Scary stuff, that.
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