Friday, July 18, 2008

Is Infanticide Coming to America?

Wesley J. Smith at Secondhand Smoke has posted about a disturbing article in journal for pediatric nurses. He deplores the blandness with which the journal looks at the Netherlands' policy about killing certain babies. I think his warning is valid.

Beware! What we don't condemn, what we claim to be mere "dilemmas," we eventually are urged to allow. Infanticide is moving into the mainstream of bioethics and the medical intelligentsia.

He also makes a great point about how we start down slippery slopes.

This is precisely how the Culture of Death permeates our society. A bioethical practice once almost universally condemned is promoted at the fringes. The initial response is resistance. But soon, the non judgmentalism arrives, usually in professional journals and among "progressive" pundits, asserting that these issues are "complex," or "difficult," or "gray," or "complicated." Once this non judgmentalism softens the ground, the issue shifts to one of mere "choice" (as with dehydration of PVS patients), and finally the decision of bioethicists (as in Futile Care Theory).

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