Skeleton at the Feast Thursday, December 02, 2004

Anybody still out there? Sorry for the silence. Life has intruded. There comes a point where blogging about kiddo antics and dopey record stores takes a back seat to, say, trying to get five hours of sleep at night.

So why blog now? Something ugly and immense is going on, and I think the folks who check in here may not have heard about it. (It's been blogged about extensively on my side of the aisle, but it hasn't made the mainstream.) I'll crib the summary from the genial Minnesotan Hugh Hewitt at the Weekly Standard:

WHEN NEWS of the Groningen Protocol surfaced in October, it was reported in the Grand Forks Herald, though I didn't read of it, nor apparently did many others. The Groningen Protocol could have been the stuff of a fine presidential debate question, or a series of questions, but I doubt if any of the debate moderators or either of the presidential candidates had heard of it either. It is an intriguing title, but it should enter the history books as shorthand for an appalling brutality...

The Groningen Protocol is the proposal of doctors in the Netherlands for the establishment of an "independent committee" charged with selecting babies and other severely handicapped or disabled people for euthanasia. The original article provides some of the key details:

Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12.

The hospital, beyond confirming the protocol in general terms, refused to discuss its details.

"It is for very sad cases," said a hospital spokesman, who declined to be identified. "After years of discussions, we made our own protocol to cover the small number of infants born with such severe disabilities that doctors can see they have extreme pain and no hope for life. Our estimate is that it will not be used but 10 to 15 times a year."

A parent's role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent's wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must be professional, so rests with doctors.

On Tuesday the AP carried a second story, and Drudge broadcast the news to the cyber world: The protocol was already in effect, and at least four babies had been deemed disposable, and killed.

I thought of two things when I read this story. The first was what the Netherlands means in the American imagination, or rather the imagination of a certain type of American: a place where you go to let everything hang out, a place that isn't as stifling as the U.S.--sort of a Branson, Mo., for DINKy hipsters. "Groningen" shows up in a favorite soundbite of mine, at the start of a live album by guitar macher and uberstoner Gary Lucas: Hello? Hi. It's good to be back in Groningen--again. It's good to be back in Holland. Gary speaking in full pothead slur.

The second thing I thought of was a Walker Percy line: Tenderness leads to the gas chamber.

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?

The only defense I can imagine is that, as a society, they're so far gone they don't know what they're doing. Is that line gonna work for us, too? (Tagline for a recent birth-control-pill commercial: Fewer periods--more possibilities! I'd say that's precisely backwards...)

Fight this, please. Sign a petition, write your congressman, write Amnesty International, do something. A very bright line is being crossed.

@ 9:59:00 AM,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home