Belgium Descends to Infanticide
It took the Dutch about 20 years to get to the point from accepting euthanasia to countenancing infanticide. It has only taken the Belgians a few years to jump off the same vertical moral cliff. Not unexpectedly--and this isn't the first such report--eugenic infanticide is now occurring in Belgium, some of it based on "quality of life" determinations. This is the moral equivalent of exposing disabled babies on hills.
No. There is no such thing as a slippery slope.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:59 AM
21 Comments
21 Comments:
I agree with qualification.
Killing the baby for quality of life criteria is reprehensible. However, I couldn't help notice this language from the article
"In about 150 cases the baby's life had been actively terminated. This involves stopping treatment or administering a fatal dose of opiates."
Apparently, this article equates stopping treatment with euthanasia.
Perhaps, what I've said before about LST withdraw being a nebulous border with euthanasia, is understandable, notwithstanding the Gluck case.
I have wondered for a long time why the scientific community continues to investigate cures for certain diseases when infanticide is available. I am strongly pro-life, but I often wonder how the (often) pro-death scientific community can justify research into cures that no one will ever need (because that disease has been "cured" already).
Paul,
I believe it's a balance between personal liberties v. state intervention, a view of "when life begins," and plain old economics.
On the same vein, I've often wondered why, at least in America, the pro-life community largely opposes universal health care. The most satisfying answer I have found, is exactly my answer to your question.
Royale: Re your first comment, I agree that the story is loose with what is being discussed. But some of the cases are described clearly as infanticide, which is why I posted it. There has also been a peer reviewed study in the Lancet that found in Flanders, which is closest culturally to the Netherlands, about 8% of all infants who die are killed by doctors--about the same as in the Netherlands.
Royale: You shouldn't generalize about the position of pro lifers about universal health care. Last I saw, the Catholic Church was very much in favor of universal health care. Let's not stereotype, shall we? And in my conversations with pro lifers about this issue who do oppose it, they worry that government health care will lead to the very problems we see out of the UK (and to some extent, Candada), e.g. health care rationing, futile care theory, long lines, etc.
Do you think our current system of private health insurance is any better? Millions without any health insurance, many with substandard insurance, companies getting rid of health care plans, plans to put in useless MSAs, futile care theory running rampant because of the desire to cut health care costs, for-profit hospitals, HMOs, etc., etc., etc.?
Surely you jest if you think our system is any better. It isn't.
Health care is a right, not a privilege for the few. Single-payer insurance should not necessarily mean long lines, rationing, etc.
"Single-payer insurance should not necessarily mean long lines, rationing, etc."
But in practice it frequently does.
Not sure health care is a "right". Is food a "right"? Clothes? A roof over your head? Health care is already a "right" in that if you go to the emergencry room they cannot turn you away, even if you do not have health insurance. This destroys the concept of "emergency room" for actual emergencies, but it does provide a certain level of health care. People are not dying in the streets.
It's possible that pro-lifers tend to be politically conservative, which would explain why they (we) don't want to see government take over one more aspect of our lives. But I've known liberal pro-lifers. I've known agnostic and atheist pro-lifers. So Wesley is right that we shouldn't stereotype.
From the article: "In most cases (84 percent) the decision was made in consultation with the parents."
So, er, what about that other 16%?
Susan: I think figuring out the right approach is the domestic challenge of our time. I think we need a mix of private/public financing. I kind of like the Medicare prescription drug approach: Private companies offering approved coverages, with people able to decline coverage, get a basic, normal, or luxury policy.
The other issues that will have to be addressed in dealing with this issue are whether illegal/undocumented aliens/immigrants will be covered, whether abortion will be covered, whether mental health will be covered, dental, etc., etc., etc.
Wesley, re: pro life and universal health care, that's why I qualified the statement with "at least in America." As evidenced by their lack of outcry in comparison to say abortion, I think it is a fair statement to say the American pro life community does not want, care for, and is apathetic to universal health care. I infer from that they largely oppose it. Is that unreasonable?
As for the Catholic community, I also infer the American pro life community is is only a minority Catholic, and even if I'm wrong, their primary emphasis of the group is not universal health care.
Royale: Not being Catholic, I can't say what the emphasis is but I do know the CC is into "social justice" very strongly, one issue of which is health care. As I said, the conservative pro life people I have talked to about this issue, and admittedly it isn't many, worry about the issues I mentioned--which doesn't seem unreasonable to me. They also worry about the bureaucracy involved in a "Hillary" type plan.
But health care is an issue we have to grapple with in a way that overcomes the usual political divides. Getting good cancer care is not pro life or pro choice. Getting children proper immunizations, ditto. Etc.
Then we come precisely to the point I made before you wanted to do this little dance. That the most satisfying rationale is all about the balance between personal liberties v. state intervention, a view of "when life begins," and plain old economics.
You assume that infanticide never occured before it was legalised, Wesley. It happened in the past as well. Doctors would often break the necks of severely deformed newborns and report it as a "stillbirth".
What, nobody wants to speak up for infanticide? I guess it's up to me. Infanticide (or more properly, neonaticide) is a very common practice in traditional cultures, and even (as the last commenter pointed out) in our culture, even if it happens under the table. It seems to be psychologically distinct from other forms of killing. It's hard to draw a line between late-term abortion and neonaticide in terms of ethics.
Alright, I'm not really in favor of infanticide, just being provocative. The real point is that personhood is a somewhat arbitrary social construct. Birth is a pretty good place to draw the boundary, but in actual practice it's not always where people draw the line, for a variety of good and bad reasons.
Here is an interesting academic article that compares the status of late-term fetuses and neonates in 4 developed countries (US, Israel, Denmark, UK). It shows that personhood is a complex, staged, gradual, and often controversial affair.
Actually, it isn't hard to draw a line at all, given that a baby is born and a fetus is not. Moreover, Germans were hanged for killing disabled infants at Nuremberg. Do we owe those dead doctors an apology?
Birth is a very useful conventional line, but a neonate is not appreciably different from a late-term fetus, so it is just a convention.
I don't know the details of the Nuremberg cases you mention, but the thrust of the article I cited is that neonates (24 hours old or less) have a different status than older infants. Also, there is a big difference between neonaticide by parents and by some third party authoritarian power.
And again, if it isn't clear, I'm not for neonaticide, I'm just against simplistic thinking about complex issues.
But Wesley, both late term fetuses and newborns can survive outside the womb.
"As evidenced by their lack of outcry in comparison to say abortion, I think it is a fair statement to say the American pro life community does not want, care for, and is apathetic to universal health care. I infer from that they largely oppose it. Is that unreasonable?"
Yes, it is.
I know that you care about X, because you told me. I haven't heard you say anything about Y, so I assume you oppose it.
Nope, doesn't follow.
Mtraven: I agree that the act of being born isn't a huge bright line separating person from non-person, which is a major reason why I oppose abortion.
mtraven said:"I don't know the details of the Nuremberg cases you mention, but the thrust of the article I cited is that neonates (24 hours old or less) have a different status than older infants."
It is a source of continuing amazement and concern about how some keep wanting the narrow the parameters of the human moral community on one hand, and then expand the parameters for some animals on the other.
Tony Jones, a fetus surviving outside the womb is called a baby.
I don't see what's so amazing about it. People disagree about the membership parameters of the moral community, for a variety of reasons. You like to make arguments against scientism, and I mostly agree -- morality can't be determined purely by science, and to met that means that moral personhood can't be determined by some crude biological standard like having a human genome.
Of course it is, Wesley. But apart from that, there is no real difference, and babies outside the womb should be treated like viable fetuses, and neither should be killed.
mtraven:
From SCIENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS REIVEW November 2005 (http://sci-con.org/2005/11/birth-of-consciousness-in-brain/):
"In a study to be published in the next issue of the international weekly Science, the two experts claim that it is “formed” by rapid, mutual communication between the upper, cortical areas of the brain. “We’ve known for some time that certain areas of the brain are fundamental for generating consciousness, while others are not,” explained Massimini, who works at Milan University .
Together with Tononi, an Italian psychiatrist at the American University of Wisconsin-Madison, he embarked on a series of experiments based on Tononi’s theory that consciousness is dependent on the brain’s ability to integrate information .
In practical terms, this means that certain parts of the brain must be able to “talk” to each other."
In a fully-formed viable newborn, the brain is already functioning in the same manner that it will continue to function in during the course of the child's life. If the connection between the certain parts of the brain that give rise to consciousness are there at birth, then we can safely assume that the baby is conscious, as all adult humans are conscious, during its awake periods. That means the brain is recording and interpreting information from the moment a baby descends from the birth canal and senses the world around her, mostly through touch and smell and less through vision and hearing at first.
One can rightly argue that the moment a baby's brain is formed she's already processing information inside the womb - sucking her thumb feels good, the sound of her father's voice sounds good, etc. Studies have shown that a newborn can recognize her father's face and follow it as soon as she is capable of focusing. She's already receiving input even before she's born.
Consciousness is connetivity in the brain that allows a human being to access the outside world and make judgments based on the input given, and then give output depending on how the information is interpreted.
Assuming a baby under 24 hours old is not conscious doesn't have much scientific basis, so based on brain activity, one may suggest that killing a newborn is exactly like killing any other person, the only difference being that the newborn has limited input to judge and therefore has less output to give. She still has to learn how to respond to things, but she has to learn what those things she's responding to are, first.
It's like the Stupid Indian Theory - native peoples are less sophisticated than we are technologically, so therefore they're inferior (non-persons) and that's when you get arguments that they don't have souls, they aren't more than animals, killing them is like killing any animal, etc. The same is true for people who think that neonates aren't really people - they aren't sophisticated yet because they only just arrived on Planet Earth and don't know what's going on yet. That doesn't make them inferior, and that doesn't make killing a newborn different from killing any other person.
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