Monday, November 06, 2006

Let's "widen the management options" to include killing children with disabilities

The UK Times has an article on how the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology is "calling on the health profession to consider permitting the euthanasia of seriously disabled newborn babies."

In response to the Times' story, the RCOG's web site links the to paper their ethics committee wrote in 2005, but has only been noticed recently, here.

The paper states,
We would particularly like the Working Party to consider the wider issues of support and information for parents, and to think more radically about non-resuscitation, withdrawal of treatment decisions, the best-interests test and active euthanasia as they are means of widening the management options available to the sickest of newborns.

Widen the management options by including active euthanasia? Killing children with disabilities should now be a "management option" for British doctors? How's that for language?

Note the logic from the Times article:
The college's submission was also welcomed by John Harris, a member of the government's Human Genetics Commission and professor of bioethics at Manchester University. "We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn. What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it okay to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other?" he said.

Prolifers see the fact that a mere change of location doesn't change the moral status of the child as a reason to protect the unborn child. Those in favor of infanticide see it as a reason to allow the killing of infants with severe disabilities.

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