Bad Boys of the Arctic Saturday, December 11, 2004

Groningen, Part Two.

A friend of mine points out that the AP story mentioned in the Hugh Hewitt excerpt below explicitly states that parents would have a role in deciding whether to end a child's life. Fair enough, and I should've done my due diligence. Hewitt either legitimately goofed or he was overspinning based on the original article.

But it doesn't change the underlying point: They're killing children.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A hospital in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives....

In August, the main Dutch doctors' association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people "with no free will," including children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident....

The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.

Whether it's doctors or parents making the decision, the decision is the same: We think it's nicer to kill this kid than let him live. Hence what I wrote earlier: When the only standard you have for behavior is increasing pleasure and decreasing misery, this is what you end up with. Some people are always going to be too miserable or too far gone to get perfected; kindest to get rid of them. Anything less than perfection must be misery, right?

Life is possibility. It may not be the possibility we expected, or wanted. But there is value in life, even if it's severely limited by physical problems. Value not only to the person suffering--who must make of his minutes what he can--but also to the people around him, who are tasked with caring and charity. Killing someone removes the possibility of love. Killing someone to make them--or you--feel better is a grievous mistake, and a parody of guardianship.

I know the retort: Let's see how you feel when you've broken your spine--or, more to the point, when your next kid is born with nothing in his skull. God knows I kept my fingers crossed for nine months, hoping Wrong Turn Jr. would turn out as shiny and perfect as an apple; God also knows it's my responsibility to love him and protect him, even if he ends up with brown spots and worms.

Similarly, it's the responsibility of a government to protect the lives of its citizens: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, to cite a local example. A government destroys the social contract if it facilitates the murder of its own people. Even people who can't speak for themselves. Especially people who can't speak for themselves. Call it the most basic civil right.

Finally, my friend suggests a better reason to mount my high horse: the horrors of the Sudan. I should've mentioned Sudan earlier, and urged people to try to help. Both situations are horrible; both deserve our time, talent and treasure, as they say on Sundays. The reason I wrote about Groningen is that it has gotten essentially no coverage in the U.S., whereas Sudan has been in the news. The silence on this issue is beyond troubling. It can happen here.

Thanks for writing, thanks for reading, thanks for keeping me honest.

@ 6:41:00 AM,

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