Report: Infanticide, Partial
Birth Abortion
American Pro-Life
Encyclopedia
CHAPTER
110. INFANTICIDE: THE ABORTION-EUTHANASIA CONNECTION
==============================
“If a doctor will take money for killing the innocent in the womb, he will kill you with a needle when paid by your children.”-- Dr. R.A. Gallop.[1]
“If the cripples are going to die, let them do so, to decrease the surplus population.”-- Scrooge discussing Tiny Tim’s frail health, quoted in “A Christmas Carol.”
“The ease with which destruction of life is advocated for those considered either socially useless or socially disturbing instead of educational or ameliorative measures may be the first danger sign of loss of creative liberty in thinking, which is the hallmark of a democratic society.”-- Leo Alexander, M.D.[2]
Is
there really any doubt any more? Is there the faintest shadow of uncertainty
that abortion is now leading to euthanasia as the day leads to the night?
If
there is, there certainly shouldn’t be!
As
Derek Humphry, our leading euthanasiast, says -- and as our own courts are now
holding -- we are killing born people on exactly the same premises that we have
been killing unborn people for so long. B.D. Cohen, medical writer for Newsday
Magazine, says that “The decision to withhold or withdraw treatment from
extremely sick, premature, and/or deformed newborns is probably being made at
least once every day by anguished parents and doctors in one of the nation’s
more than 500 intensive care nurseries.”[3]
There
are three critical characteristics that tie abortion and euthanasia together so
intimately that they really can never be separated.
These
features are;
(1) The identical utilitarian worldview of the
perpetrators;
(2) The identical tactics used by both the
pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia movements (as described in Chapter 109), and;
(3) The intimate relationship of the “bridge” issue
-- infanticide -- to both abortion and euthanasia.
This
chapter discusses these characteristics in detail and proves, beyond a shadow
of a doubt, that abortion has already inevitably led to widespread euthanasia
in the form of infanticide in the United States.
“There must be a right to dispose of an infant survivor of abortion.”-- Abortionist Warren Hern.[4]
The
(in)famous Roe v. Wade decision is now being used by our court system to justify
not only the killing of unborn people under the mythical ‘right to privacy,’
but born people as well!
Take
for example United States District Judge Thomas Jackson, who ordered a
respirator removed from 71 year old Martha A. Tune at Walter Reed Army Hospital
on February 28, 1985. Judge Jackson wrote that “In the Roe case, the court
proceeded upon the premise that a competent adult has a paramount right to
control the disposition to be made of his or her own body. This [Roe v. Wade]
abortion decision was instructive for purposes of this case.”[5]
Mrs.
Tune died five hours after her respirator was removed.
The
judge in a recent abortion clinic trespass case baldly acknowledged that
preborns are human beings, but went on to say that their murder is sanctioned
and protected by the state.
Judge
Bruce Bach of Fairfax, Virginia stated in his opinion on The State of Virginia
v. Christyanne Collins and Harry F. Hand that “I will find as a matter of fact
that unborn human lives were being terminated in the clinic that morning
because that’s what the evidence in this particular case is. And I am not a
medical doctor. All of the evidence is that first trimester fetuses are human
beings ... I reject the defense of necessity because we have in our society
many instances of, I’ll call it, State- sanctioned killing of human beings. And
while the evidence is that human lives are being terminated, the Virginia
statutes clearly allow the termination of human lives in the first trimester
... people at that clinic have a right under our law as it is today to do what
they were doing and to do it without interference from people, well-meaning or
otherwise ... So I do find them [the defendants] guilty and those are my
reasons.”[6]
Pro-abortionists
have, for the most part, jettisoned their premise that the unborn are not human
beings. Many people who have blockaded abortion clinics watch abortion clinic
staff simply shrug on the witness stand and say words to the effect of “Yeah,
it’s a baby. But so what? Abortion is perfectly legal!”
This
hideous attitude is terrifyingly common among more and more people as our
society becomes progressively desensitized to killing. A typical recent
interview with an abortion clinic employee brought this trend into clear focus;
Interviewer: “Oh, so as long as you make money, it
doesn’t matter?”
Clinic Employee: “As long as it’s food in my
stomach, no, it doesn’t matter. It is legal ... It is legal ... It is legal!”
Interviewer: “So if they legalized killing four-year-
old children, you would have no problem?”
Clinic Employee: “No, I would not have a problem ...
My conscience is very clear ...”[7]
A
graphically sickening statement by Dr. Magda Denes illustrates this growing
genocidal mindset among pro-abortionists; “I do think abortion is murder -- of
a very special and necessary sort. What else would one call the deliberate
stilling of a life? And no physician involved with the procedure ever kids
himself about that ... legalistic distinctions among “homicide,” “justified
homicide,” “self-defense,” and “murder” appear to me a semantic game. What
difference does it make what we call it? Those who do it and those who witness
its doing know that abortion is the stilling of a life.”[8]
Celebrities,
always heavily Neoliberal in their outlook, are also jumping onto the
‘bandwagon of death’ as they simply jettison all pretense about the nature of
abortion. One of these is Norman Mailer, who is certainly honest in his
attitude towards the preborn; “Let me say something that’s shocking. I am
perfectly willing to grant that life starts at conception. If a woman doesn’t
want to have a child, then I think it’s her right to say no. But let’s not
pretend that it isn’t a form of killing.”[9]
This
attitude is desperately dangerous, and voices from the past fairly shout to us
with warning! The anti-life people have taken the final, critical step: they
have stopped trying to kid themselves about the humanity of those they are
killing. They are admitting that they are killing human beings, and they
couldn’t care less!
There
is only one step remaining -- GENOCIDE!
The
same blindness and duplicity inherent in the pro-abortion movement is part of
the warp and woof of the pro-euthanasia movement as well. Those who advocate
death by starvation for newborn babies quail at the thought of capital
punishment. At the very least, the probability of executing an innocent man or
woman is much more remote than the probability of executing a perfectly healthy
newborn baby.
In
just one such execution of an innocent baby, reporter Mike Taibbi, in part four
of his series Death in the Nursery , describes a case “... where a premature
infant was allowed to die at the urging of a neurosurgeon who mistakenly
diagnosed anencephaly (the absence of a brain). An autopsy showed there was a
brain ... which had the characteristics of prematurity, but which was perfectly
formed.”[3]
The
same Neoliberals who shrilly condemn Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse medical
treatment for their children are curiously silent when a perfectly healthy
newborn baby like the one described above dies a hideous and lingering death
from starvation and thirst.
The
other similarities between the pro- abortion and pro-euthanasia strategies are
not only striking -- they are urgent and compelling.
Chapter
109, “The History of Euthanasia,” reveals the similarities in strategy and
tactics used by the pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia movements, and shows that
these anti-life movements have proceeded along identical tracks over their
entire development. The only difference is that the pro-euthanasia movement
trails the pro-abortion movement by about two decades.
One
of the most obvious tactics shared by the pro-abortionists and the
euthanasiasts is the identical slogans. They worked very well for abortion, so
why not dust ‘em off and use them to obtain a “right” to kill born human
beings?
The
pro-aborts said that they have a right to control their own bodies. So do the
pro-euthanasia people.
The
pro-aborts claimed that they had a paramount ‘right to privacy.’ So do the
euthanasia pushers.
And
the pro-aborts said that there were so many illegal abortions happening that we
might as well make the procedure legal. So are the euthanasiasts, including Dr.
Frank M. Guttman of Canada, who, at a meeting of the Canadian Pediatric Society
in June of 1978, “suggested that legal mercy-killing and infanticide is
necessary because it is happening anyway and legalizing it would encourage more
respect for the law.”[10]
Perhaps
these tactical similarities are not too surprising when we realize that
virtually all pro-euthanasia leaders have been active in the pro-abortion
movement for years, and have found that the same strategies that worked so
brilliantly in their push for abortion are now working just as well as they
lobby vigorously for euthanasia. Nick Thimmesch noticed that the same people
who pushed so hard for abortion are now lobbying for the destruction of adult
human life when he wrote in Newsweek Magazine that “It bothers me that
eugenicists in Germany organized the mass destruction of mental patients, and
in the United States pro-abortionists now also serve in pro-euthanasia
organizations. Sorry, but I see a pattern.”[11]
“I am not afraid that genetic screening will lead to genocide, nor that abortion will lead to infanticide, as many have warned. If we need checks on our behavior, the law will provide them.”-- Margery W. Shaw, M.D.[12]
We
had traveled a long way down the slippery slope by 1980. However, at that time
there still existed a vast chasm between abortion and euthanasia that needed to
be bridged by the euthanasiasts.
By
1990, the anti-life forces had succeeded admirably in spanning the gap with the
device of infanticide.
Infanticide
is, of course, literally a form of euthanasia. Its great importance lies in the
fact that it is the “bridge” that spans the gap between the killing of the
unborn and the killing of adults.
Infanticide
is now being practiced in this country on a larger and larger scale. Everyone
remembers “Baby Doe” and “Baby Jane Doe.” These handicapped babies, with the
sanction of society, were allowed to die lingering and agonizing deaths of
starvation and thirst.
To
begin with, it must be made perfectly clear that infanticide IS a form of
euthanasia. Infanticide is very important, because it is the “bridge” between
abortion and adult euthanasia. Infanticide’s proponents argue, rightly so, that
there is no real difference between a third-trimester abortion and the killing
of an infant soon after birth. In fact, Joseph Fletcher, former President
Emeritus of the Society for the Right to Die (formerly the Euthanasia Society
of America), and often called “The Father of Situation Ethics,” has referred to
infanticide as “post-natal abortion.”[13]
Infanticide
is clearly entrenched as standard and ethical practice in the medical
profession. To demonstrate this concept, three of the critical “bridge cases”
between late-term abortion and outright infanticide are described in the
following paragraphs: The Edelin, Waddill, and Laufe incidents.
Just
months after the Roe v. Wade case was handed down by the United States Supreme
Court, an abortionist provided the country with a perfect illustration of the
connection between abortion and outright infanticide.
On
October 3, 1973, Kenneth Edelin of Boston performed an abortion on a 17-year
old girl who was 24 weeks pregnant. His saline abortion attempt had failed, so
he performed a hysterotomy (Cesarian) abortion the next day.
He
detached the placenta (cutting off blood oxygenation to the baby) and held the
child inside the mother’s uterus for three minutes as he watched the clock.
Satisfied that the baby was finally dead, he removed it and disposed of it. A
pathologist testified that the baby had been able to take at least one breath
before Edelin suffocated it.[14]
Edelin
was charged and convicted of manslaughter by a jury, but the verdict was thrown
out by an appeals court on a minor technicality. It is significant that every
major national pro-abortion group rallied to Edelin’s defense, and went so far
as to pay for most of his court costs. Additionally, the pro-abortionists
bombarded the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court with more than a dozen
briefs, claiming that if Edelin was convicted, it would “unduly chill”
late-term abortion practice.[15]
Longtime
Zero Population Growth activist Anne Gaylor, in her incredibly-named book
Abortion is a Blessing , displayed her transparent anti-Catholic bigotry as she
simpered “That gentle Dr. Edelin ever should have found himself a defendant
against a charge of manslaughter beggars belief ... That card-carrying,
dues-paying Catholics ever should have been allowed to serve on a jury deciding
a charge of abortion-related manslaughter is a travesty of justice.”[16]
It
did not seem to occur to Gaylor that her statement was equivalent to saying
that no Jew should ever sit on a jury judging an American Nazi accused of
committing hate crimes.
It
is also significant that, once again, the court system overrode the verdict of
a jury -- the recorded will of the people -- in favor of expanding abortion
“rights” to include infanticide.
Benjamin
Waddill, an abortionist and member of the Association of Planned Parenthood
Physicians, performed a saline abortion on 19-year old Mary Weaver on March 2,
1977 at California’s Westminster Community Hospital in.
Mary
Weaver knew that she was at least 28 weeks pregnant, well into the third
trimester. Her baby was healthy, she was not a victim of rape or incest or
health problems, but she still wanted an abortion so she would not embarrass
her father, who was principal of the high school that she had attended. This is
a classic example of third-trimester abortion for pure convenience, a
phenomenon that pro-abortionists claim simply does not exist.
After
doing the saline infusion, Waddill left the scene. Later, he phoned the
hospital and talked to a nurse who informed him that a viable baby had resulted
from his abortion. Waddill instructed her “Don’t do a Goddamn thing for that
baby.” He then returned to the hospital’s newborn nursery, where the baby had
been relocated, and ordered the area cleared of all medical personnel. He then
choked Baby Girl Weaver four separate times, by pushing down on her windpipe
with his thumb. Dr. Ronald Cornelson, the attending pediatrician, witnessed the
entire sequence of events and subsequently brought charges against Waddill.
During the trial, the prosecutor presented a taped phone conversation in which
Waddill told Cornelson to “not get squirrely and stick to the story as we
discussed.” He maintained that he had merely put his hand on her throat to
check her pulse.[17]
However,
the prosecutor also showed that Waddill had explained to several people that he
choked the baby girl to death because he feared that lawsuits would be filed
against him if the baby survived.
The
mother of the baby sued Waddill, claiming that she would never have gone
through with the abortion if he had informed her that she might give birth to a
live baby.
At
Waddill’s trial, Judge James K. Turner instructed the jury to ignore the
classical definition of death (cessation of all vital signs) and instead adopt
a new one -- the irreversible cessation of brain function. The jury deadlocked
after a week of deliberation, with seven of the twelve jurors voting for
acquittal.[17]
Waddill
concluded his post-trial statements by saying “I’m especially angry at the
Catholic Church over this.”
Despite
the frustrating conduct and results of the trial, at least some good came out
of the Waddill infanticide case. Westminster Community Hospital immediately
restricted all abortions to 12 weeks, and the Akron, Ohio city council voted
strict limits on abortion, with much of the pro-life testimony based on the
Waddill case. These limits were naturally challenged by the American Civil
Liberties Union and eventually led to a Supreme Court battle.
Waddill
eventually stood trial a second time, and once again the jury arrived at a
deadlock. He stated during this second trial that “I do not think that is human
life if one must live a damaged vegetative existence. It would have been
horribly cruel to the abortus as well as to the family if the abortus had been
put on a respirator -- it would have been a mockery of medicine ... Life on a
respirator is not life.”[17]
We
must ask this question: How much “dignity” did Baby Girl Weaver have? Waddill
herself decreased her “quality of life” by scalding her tender skin off, and
then pronounced her unworthy to live and choked the little baby to death.
It
is interesting to note that Waddill issued a “no-code” for his own father in
North Carolina in 1971. He is also an ardent supporter of “death with dignity.”
Dr.
Leonard Laufe of West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, specializes in
late-term abortions. In 1985, a woman falsely claimed that she had been raped
and Laufe aborted her 32-week baby. The prostaglandin abortion resulted in the
baby being born alive. The little baby began to gasp and kick, and Nurse Monica
Bright testified that Laufe ordered that no help be given to the child. In
fact, one of the staff doctors ordered nurses to directly murder the child with
a fatal injection of morphine. At least three nurses refused to kill the child.
The entire episode, including closeups of the baby gasping and kicking, was
filmed for “educational purposes.”
The
original birth records indicated that the little girl weighed more than three
pounds and was 18 inches long. In order to cover up his killing, Dr. Laufe
altered hospital records to read a weight of two and a half pounds and a length
of only 11 inches.
Medical
student John Kenny testified that Dr. Laufe’s attorney promised him that, if he
testified in court, he would never be able to get a medical license or practice
in any hospital in Pennsylvania.
Dr.
Laufe claimed that the baby was dead at birth. Despite the film of the entire
episode, he was acquitted of all charges.[18]
This
episode decisively proved that the purpose of abortion is not just to be rid of
a child; the purpose is to kill the child.
“If we really believe in love, and find that a baby will be born having no arms, we would say, ‘Baby, we are going to love you. We will make arms for you. We have many new skills now for doing this. And, Baby, if these arms don’t work, we will be your arms. We will take care of you. You can be sure of that. You are one of us, a member of our human family, and we will always love you.’”-- Dr. Victor G. Rosenblum.[19]
Before
any act of euthanasia, infanticide, or suicide may be committed, the killer
(and sometimes the victim) must make some kind of assessment of the value of
the life of the person who is being considered for death.
To
put it simply, the worth of the person’s life is considered to be the sum of
his worth to himself and his worth to society. This is the total benefit that
the person can produce. On the other side of the equation, the value of the
services required to keep him alive are the costs of the person’s life.
Eugenicists
believe that, if the costs of maintaining a life exceed the benefits that the
particular life can provide to society, the person should die.
This
utilitarian concept can only work in a God-free society, because Christians
know that every human life is infinitely precious in the eyes of God. The only
way a society can arrive at the point where it is coldly applying benefit-cost
analyses to individuals -- or even groups of individuals -- is if God is first
effectively excluded from the equation.
After
51 construction workers died in a 1978 power plant accident at Willow Island,
West Virginia, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
proposed new safety rules that would cost industry a total of $27.3 million per
year. OSHA estimated that these new guidelines would save 23 lives per year.
These
regulations were considered economically feasible, because OSHA valued a human
life at $3.5 million, and the resulting cost-benefit ratio was of the
regulations was therefore (23 X 3.5)/27.3 = 2.95 (i.e., every one dollar
invested would be projected to return $2.95 in ‘lifesaving’ benefits).
President
Reagan’s Executive Order 12291, of February 17, 1981, mandated that each
Federal government program formulate a cost-benefit ratio before writing new
regulations. Although the Executive Order was not directly intended to include
an assessment of the value of human life, Federal agencies were nonetheless
forced to produce the best number they could in order to perform analyses
involving the potential loss or gain of human life.
It
is interesting to see what average values various Federal agencies placed on
human life for research purposes, as shown below. It is only fair to point out
that each of these analyses was performed with the utmost reluctance by
government statisticians, not only for ethical reasons but because of the
extreme difficulties associated with such an intangible calculation.
|
Department of Agriculture: |
$1.10 million. |
|
Department of Transportation: |
$1.25 million. |
|
Office of Management and Budget (OMB): |
$1.50 million. |
|
Consumer Product Safety Commission: |
$1.75 million. |
|
Occupational Safety and Health Administration: |
$3.50 million. |
|
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC): |
$5.00 million. |
|
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): |
$4.80 million. |
Reference. Christopher Scanlan, Knight-Ridder News Service. “Just What’s Human Life Worth? Is That Dollars or Sense?” The Oregonian , July 17, 1990, page A2.
It
seems that some groups of persons consider themselves exempt from the rules
that bind the rest of us mere mortals. In particular, certain physicians assume
that they are so intelligent and powerful that they can ignore the lessons of
history with impunity.
American
doctors are following precisely the same road that the Nazi physicians did, as
described in Chapter 53 of Volume II, “The Holocaust Analogy to Abortion.” The
first step the Nazi doctors took was to assign a fixed monetary value to
handicapped human life. And now American doctors are doing exactly the same
thing.
Two
researchers recently estimated that about $2.6 billion is spent annually in
this country on neonatal intensive care. The tiniest preemies average hospital
stay of 137 days and a cost of $158,800 per infant. According to the
researchers, “It would be more cost-effective to address the root causes of
prematurity -- lack of prenatal care, poor nutrition in pregnant women,
homelessness, and drug or alcohol addiction than treating premature babies in
neonatal intensive care (NICU) units. Once physicians and parents, together,
have collaboratively agreed to a strategy for treatment or non-treatment, this
ought not to be subject to arbitrary veto by interested third parties, whether
pro-life lobbyists or federal bureaucrats.”[20]
Note
that a little arithmetic shows that the authors are casually condemning 16,400
newborn babies to death every year.
Hopefully,
the authors of the above quote did not put themselves to too much worry; their
dream is coming true day by day in the Neonatal ICUs in this great country of
ours.
Infanticide
is certainly nothing new. In 1963, Johns Hopkins University Medical School
doctors delivered a baby suffering from Down Syndrome and a minor intestinal
blockage, which would have been easily correctable by surgery. With the full
approval of the parents, the ‘physicians’ opted for “non-treatment” and let the
helpless little baby starve to death over a period of two weeks.[21]
The
Nazi euthanasia program began with infanticide as well. Dr. Hermann Pfannmuller
adopted the “simple and natural” method of cutting back rations a little more
(to less than 100 calories per day) until small handicapped children simply
starved to death.[22]
Author
Fredric Wertham describes Dr. Pfannmuller’s methodology; “In the children’s
ward were some 25 half-starved children ranging in age from one to five years.
The director of the institution, Dr. Pfannmuller, explained the routine. “We
don’t do it with poisons or injections, our method is much simpler and more
natural.” With these words, the fat and smiling doctor lifted an emaciated,
whimpering little child from his little bed, holding him like a dead rabbit. He
went on to explain that food is not withdrawn all at once, but the rations are
gradually decreased. “With this child,” he added, “it will take another two or
three days.”“[23]
If
we are going to efficiently exterminate a large class of people, we must have
an impeccably scientific justification for doing so. This process includes
assessing the worthiness of individual people to live.
The
technique is slightly different when applied to “candidates” for abortion and
“candidates” for euthanasia: For abortion, no particular criteria for “quality
of life” is necessary, other than some amorphous and ill-defined feeling of the
“mother.”
Euthanasia-related
“quality of life” calculations are also entirely different from assigning a
fixed value to human life as done by Federal agencies, because their reason for
assigning a value to life is usually associated with trying to save or protect
life. “Quality of life” criteria are invariably involved in some attempt to
exterminate life.
For
euthanasia, a mathematical formula or other pseudo-scientific means must be
applied in order to give the public the idea that some serious thinking is
going on behind the outright murder of human beings.
This
process makes direct euthanasia palatable to the more unthinking and pliable
segments of the public, who know that killing people is wrong. The formulas,
however, give them an excuse for inaction and helps soothe their consciences.
The
most popular means of finding out if life is worth living is to apply a
mathematical procedure to the “candidate,” such as with the popular “quality of
life” formula concocted by Dr. Anthony Shaw, a pediatric surgeon;[24]
|
QL = NE X (H + S) |
|
where; |
|
QL = Quality of life |
|
NE = Natural endowment of the candidate for life |
|
H = Required contributions by home and family |
|
S = Required contributions by society at large. |
Note
that the formula’s parameters are conveniently rubbery and expandable; they can
be adjusted at any time to fit any situation.
In
its truest form, this formula is nothing more or less than an attempt to give a
civilized and scientific veneer to the execution or killing of anyone at all .
This
particular formula has already been applied in real-life (and real-death)
situations, one of which is described below.
Other,
more subjective-appearing criteria for ‘quality of life’ have been proposed by
various ‘bioethicists.’
Over
a period of time, a team of four physicians and a social worker at the Oklahoma
Children’s Memorial Hospital evaluated 69 babies born with myelomeningocele
(spina bifida) with the above formula. Of these, 36 were considered worthy of
life and were given aggressive treatment, and 33 were pronounced unworthy of
further effort and were deemed unfit to live.[25]
The
parents of the unfortunate 33 were consulted regarding this “non-treatment,”
and 24 concurred. All 24 little babies died after spending an average of 37
days on this hostile earth.
Surely
they are in better, more loving arms now than those of the “parents” who
willingly signed their death warrants. They were warehoused at a children’s
“shelter,” where they were refused antibiotics and even sedation. This
so-called “shelter” has since been shut down by the Justice Department for
medicaid fraud and racketeering.
The
Justice Department only acted after the American Civil Liberties Union, the
Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, the American Coalition of
Citizens with Disabilities, and the National Legal Center for the Medically
Dependent and Disabled threatened legal action.
It
is painfully significant that six of eight babies initially condemned to die --
those babies who were fortunate enough to have parents who cared --lived! (one
baby moved out of state and could not be traced). If the same ratio applied to
the other babies who were condemned to death, at least 18 of the 24 would have
lived.[26]
Sadly,
this ‘hospital’ is not the only “institution of healing” that now practices
outright infanticide. McGee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh is just one of the
hospitals that has been allowing handicapped newborn babies to die for at least
fifteen years. National Right to Life Counsel James Bopp estimates that about
5,000 handicapped newborns are “treated” to death every year in the United
States.
Many
hospitals, as common practice, allow anencephalic and other severely
handicapped newborns to die without their parent’s knowledge or consent (i.e.,
enforced mandatory euthanasia). One such pitiful case is described on pages 456
and 457 of The Farm’s book Spiritual Midwifery .
There
is a concerted push in this country for nationalized medicine, whose primary
goal is not patient care, but cost containment. Britain’s National Health
Service, for instance, routinely starves to death all babies with spina bifida.
If the parents of such a child object and check him out of the hospital, they
are cut off from all medical care.
In
other words, the State (with a capital “S”) dictates the parameters of medical
care, who will be saved and who will not be.[27]
This
is the root of the pro-life objection to nationalized medicine. Such programs
have as their highest goal not healing but the containment of costs, and the
only way that this objective can be met is for the operators to create -- and
then apply -- ‘quality of life’ formulas.
The
most extreme example of the “quality of life” mentality has been promulgated by
‘bioethicist’ Joseph Fletcher. Fletcher has drawn up a comprehensive list of
‘positive’ and ‘negative’ human qualities that define exactly what a person is
and is not , as shown in Figure 110-1.
|
(1) Minimal intelligence: Anyone with an IQ under 40 is questionably human. Anyone with an IQ less than 20 is definitely non-human. |
|
(2) Self-awareness: Newborn babies are not self-aware and therefore not human. This quality develops at about one year of age. |
|
(3) Self-control: If a person lacks self-control, he is on a low level of life comparable to a paramecium. |
|
(4) A sense of time: Anyone without a good sense of the passage of time is not human. |
|
(5) A sense of the future. How ‘truly human’ is any man who cannot realize there is a time yet to come? |
|
(6) A sense of the past: A focus on ‘nowness’ truncates the nature of man. |
|
(7) The capability to relate to others, particularly in relationships of the sexual-romantic and friendship kind. |
|
(8) Concern for others: Lack of this ambience indicates psychopathology. |
|
(9) Communication: Completely isolated individuals are sub-persons. |
|
(10) Control of existence: Ignorance and total helplessness are the antithesis of humanness. |
|
(11) Curiosity: Without a certain amount of curiosity, individuals are not persons deserving legal rights and protections. |
|
(12) Change and changeability: If an individual is opposed to change, he denies the creativity of personal beings. |
|
(13) Balance of rationality and feeling: To be ‘truly human,’ one cannot be either Apollonian [extremely rational and logical in character] or Dionysian [of frenzied and emotional character]. |
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(14) Idiosyncrasy: To be a person is to have an identity, to be recognizable and callable by name. |
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(15) Neo-cortical function: Before cerebration [thinking] is in play, the person is non-existent. Such individuals are objects, not subjects. |
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Man is not non-artificial or anti-artificial. |
|
Man is not essentially parental. |
|
Man is not essentially sexual. |
|
Man is not a bundle of rights. All rights are imperfect and may be set aside if human need requires it. |
|
Man is not a worshipper. |
Reference: Joseph Fletcher. “Indicators of Humanhood: A Tentative Profile of Man.” Hastings Center Report . Volume 2, Number 5, November, 1972.
If
implemented, Fletcher’s criteria would cause more than 100 large groups of
persons to automatically lose their humanity. These groups would include the
following, and would comprise approximately one-fifth of the human population;
·
all infants under one year of age;
·
twins and triplets;
·
all celibate persons;
·
the profoundly retarded;
·
habitual drunkards and drug addicts;
·
prisoners;
·
all comatose persons;
·
pro-life activists;
·
emotional persons; and
·
all religious persons.
Fletcher
would casually kill the 260,000 United States citizens with IQs of less than
25, and the 630,000 with IQs of from 25 to 49.[28]
It
seems that every advocate of euthanasia for the handicapped is able-bodied and
healthy. Why don’t we take a page from the pro-abortionists who say that men
have no right to oppose abortion because they can’t get pregnant? We could say
to these pro-eugenics and pro-euthanasia people “You have no right to advocate
euthanasia for the handicapped unless you yourself are handicapped.”
If
everyone on Fletcher’s list were eliminated, we would certainly have a more
perfect (and more soulless) world.
“Abortion and euthanasia are separate issues (though determining the end of the human person is as difficult a question as determining the start); we set speed limits at 60 MPH and do not necessarily move them to 70 MPH (one step does not necessarily lead to another).”-- National Abortion Rights Action League.[29]
Now
that we have gone on record as approving the indirect euthanasia of newborns by
starvation and thirst, the glaringly obvious next step is to condemn such a
practice as “inhumane” -- but, instead of stopping the deaths, the
euthanasiasts will vocally call for direct euthanasia to end the suffering that
they themselves have inflicted.
This
is precisely the same tactic used by pro-abortionists who set up illegal
abortion networks like “Jane,” and then called for abortion legalization
because their own people were botching too many abortions.
It
all began in the early 1970s, when a mongoloid child with a small section of
atrophied duodenum (which could easily have been corrected by a 20-minute
surgery) was born at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The decision was made not to
“treat” this child (including the withholding of food and water), and the baby
lingered agonizingly for fifteen long days before dying.
Speaking
of this case, ‘ethicist’ Joseph Fletcher (the same person who outlined the
‘criteria for humanity’ shown in Figure 110-1) vigorously pushed for direct
euthanasia and said that “Some form of direct termination would have been far
more merciful as far as the infant, nurses, parents, and some of the physicians
were concerned. In that case, indirect was morally worse than direct -- if, as
I and most of us would contend, the good and the right are determined by human
well-being. Indirect euthanasia did no good at all in that case, but lots of
evil.”[30]
And,
speaking of an adult euthanasia case, none other than Jack “The Dripper”
Kevorkian weighed in with this statement; “Allowing someone to starve to death
and to die of thirst, the way we do now, is barbaric. Our Supreme Court has
validated barbarism. The Nazis did that in concentration camps ... It took her
[Nancy Cruzan] a week to die. Try it! You think that just because you’re in a
coma you don’t suffer?”[31]
With
more and more pitiful little “unwanted” babies dying agonizing deaths, the
pro-euthanasia ghouls have seized on the public’s sympathy and are now pushing
harder and harder for direct killing. Dr. Christiaan Barnard, renowned for his
transplant of a baboon heart into a child, stated in the March 1986 issue of
Omni Magazine that “Legalizing euthanasia, with controls, would do more to
improve the overall quality of American medical care than any other single
act.”[32]
This
is the same Christiaan Barnard who stated in his autobiography One Life that
one of his greatest dreams was to “... take a baboon and cool him down, wash
out his blood with water, then fill him up with human blood.” Another dream of
his was to graft a second head onto a dog.[33]
He
rather sounds like a small child who is delighted with a new set of complex
biological Tinker Toys.
‘Bioethicist’
Diana Crane jumped onto the deathwagon when she asserted that “In this type of
[Spina Bifida] case, also, specific guidelines for the withdrawal of treatment
and even for the termination of life would appear to be highly desirable.”[34]
We
know who wants direct killing, and we know that they will not rest until actual
euthanasia mills are in place and making a tidy profit on human misery -- just
like the abortion clinics are doing right now.
25
years ago, Neoliberals laughed at pro-lifers who were fretting over the gradual
liberalization of abortion laws, and who predicted chains of abortion clinics
across the land. Now pro-euthanasiasts are chuckling at the same people who are
worried that euthanasia clinics will soon sprout up all over the country.
This
is despite the fact that several leading euthanasiasts have advocated and even
described such chains.
One
of these is Jack Kevorkian, the retired pathologist who, as of this writing,
had racked up 15 assisted suicides. He has published a serious proposal to
establish a chain of euthanasia mills -- “obitoriums” -- where trained staffs
of suicide specialists (“obitiatrists”) would help people commit
medically-assisted suicide, or “medicide.”[35]
It
is not surprising at all that the country’s leading pro- abortionists are also
in the forefront of the push for killing inconvenient born human beings.
The
list of those who have gone on public record as supporting direct infanticide
is fascinating;
·
Dr. Alan Guttmacher, former President, Planned Parenthood Federation of
America (PPFA);
·
Betty Friedan, founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW);
·
Larry Lader, co-founder, National Abortion Rights Action League
(NARAL);
·
Henry Morgentaler, notorious Canadian illegal abortionist and past
president of the Humanist Association of Canada;
·
Planned Parenthood ‘sex guru’ Sol Gordon;
·
Edd Doerr, spokesman of Americans United for Separation of Church and
State; and
·
Behaviorist Dr. B.F. Skinner, past vice president of the pro-abortion
Association for the Study of Abortion.
“To me it is [morally permissible to withhold treatment from newborns with handicaps]. I don’t see any reason to take $500,000 away from, say, nutrition for other children just to provide life to an organism that has hardly started yet.”-- Harvard University Professor Thomas Snelling.[36]
On
April 9, 1982, a little boy with Down Syndrome was born in Indiana’s
Bloomington Hospital. It was determined that he also had a badly formed and
blocked esophagus. However, this presented only a minor danger to the child’s
life, because a simple surgery could be performed to allow him to swallow again
with no trouble. The baby’s pediatrician urged immediate surgery, but the
parents were advised by their obstetrician not to authorize the surgery.
Attorneys
for the baby tried to compel physicians to perform the lifesaving surgery. They
also petitioned the Indiana Supreme Court, which refused the lawyer’s emergency
petition.
On
April 12, Judge John G. Baker of the Monroe County Circuit Court held that the
parents “... have the right to choose a medically recommended course of
treatment for their child in the present circumstances.”
Dr.
Walter Owens, an obstetrician, testified during the trial that “I insisted upon
telling the parents that this still would not be a normal child ... that they
did have another alternative, which was to do nothing. In which case, the child
[would] probably live only a matter of several days ... some of these children
[born with Down’s Syndrome] are mere blobs.”[37]
The
baby, meanwhile, lay in a corner, his terrible thirst unslaked by even his
saliva, which had dried up in his mouth days ago. According to testimony, he
cried for five days before he dehydrated to the point where all he could do was
lie in his bed and stare at the ceiling (his tears having long since dried up
so he could not even blink).
A
team of pediatricians finally could stand the horror no longer and went to his
side to administer treatment. But, as one of the physicians later wrote, “Baby
Doe’s shrunken, thin little body with dry cyanotic skin, extremely dehydrated,
breathing shallowly and irregularly, lay passively on fresh hospital linens.
Death by starvation was near. Too late for fluids. Too late for surgery. Too
late for justice.”[38]
Baby
Doe died in agony after just twelve days on this hostile earth. Although more
than 300 couples had pleaded to adopt him, care for him, love him, and pay for
his surgery, the Indiana court system found that the parent’s right to privacy
overrode any other consideration -- and the ultimate price for this precious
privacy was paid for in full by twelve days of excruciating agony, suffered by
a tiny, innocent newborn.
This
incident was so horrible that many pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia activists
insisted that it was unique.
However,
as with almost everything else that issues from their lips, this was an
outright lie.
Baby
Doe was only the first court-sanctioned case of infanticide. As always in such
matters, the second instance was not far behind.
In
October 1983, Baby Jane Doe (Keri Lynn) was born in Smithtown, New York. She
suffered from spina bifida (nonclosure of the spinal cord), water on the brain,
and nerve problems. Without surgery, she would certainly die by the age of two.
The ‘doctors’ and ‘parents’ opted to let the child starve to death, and their
actions were once more upheld by the courts.
But
perhaps these poor babies didn’t die in vain after all. Their deaths, and the
surrounding blazes of publicity, laid bare the hideous machinations of the
euthanasiasts for a brief moment in time, and a large number of medical
professionals came forward and told their stories.
For
example, Mary Arnold, an obstetrical nurse, gave a chilling account of how
involuntary euthanasia is widespread in the United States today as she
recounted that “The doctor would see the baby’s head coming out through the
birth canal, realize it had Down’s Syndrome, and signal us to let it die. The
mother’s legs would be up so she couldn’t see what was going on. We would get a
little wave of the doctor’s hand -- a signal to us not to use suction on the
baby. Then they’d say to the mother, “we’re just going to give you something to
relax you,” and the next minute, she’d be unconscious. When she came around,
they’d say the baby had died on delivery.”[39]
According
to experts in the field of euthanasia, between 2,000 and 20,000 such instances
of euthanasia happen every year in this country -- and a large percentage are
being committed against newborn babies.[28]
As
a direct result of the original Baby Doe case, the Reagan administration
attempted to mandate legal protection for handicapped newborns. The American
Medical Association and the National Association of Pediatrics fought these
regulations tooth and nail in the courts because, as they ironically asserted,
any outside interference with medical practice would “endanger the lives and
safety of patients.”
Thus,
infanticide in the United States has become a medically and legally approved
principle -- and practice. Doctors now kill in the name of healing with
complete protection from the courts.
So,
as we travel the wide and easy road from contraception to abortion to
infanticide to euthanasia, we are experiencing once again the bioethical
“ratcheting effect.” The ratchet only travels in one direction. There may be
short delays as the system adjusts itself to the novelty of a new ethical
practice, but, overall, the process is irreversible in the absence of a major
moral counterrevolution.
Once
a new and immoral practice has been implemented, it quickly develops an
irresistible momentum. It creates a legal, medical, economic, and, above all,
psychological infrastructure that immediately anchors itself to the previous
strata of medical “advancement,” and it quickly becomes immovable. It cannot be
uprooted without tearing away a significant portion of what has come before,
and its supporters enthusiastically trumpet the shopworn but effective specter
of “turning the clock back on medicine.”
Eventually,
the new practice is immovable and the unthinkable has become the commonplace.
The immoral has become moral and accepted. At this point, society is ready
(eager)? to embark on the next step of “progress.”
And,
of course, the more frequently such steps are taken, the easier it is to make
larger, more frequent, and less thought-out steps, all in the name of medical
progress.
“The NICU [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] is used right along with liver transplants as examples of how resources are squandered in our society.”-- ‘Bioethicist’ Johnny Cox of the Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Washington.[40]
The
abortion-euthanasia connection, embodied in the practice of infanticide, is no
paranoid pro-life fantasy.
Leading
pro-abortion advocates in this country are trying their best to convince the
public that we should take “just one more harmless little step” in the
relentless march down the road to genocide. After all, they say, what is the
difference between “letting go” a deformed third-trimester fetus and a
defective newborn? The latter, after all, is just “post-natal abortion.”
The
quotes in Figure 110-2 by those who are enthusiastically pushing infanticide
demonstrate vividly the link between abortion and euthanasia, and how easily
our society is “progressing” from feticide to infanticide, and finally to adult
euthanasia.
|
STEP ONE: Dehumanize the Handicapped Newborn |
|
“A newborn is merely an organism with a potential for human qualities, no more significant than at second, fourth, or sixth months of pregnancy.”-- Dr. Milton Heifitz, Chief of Neurosurgery, LA Medical Center, testimony before Congress, March 23, 1976. |
|
“Infanticide has a logical continuity with abortion, and even with contraception.”-- Edward Pohlman of Planned Parenthood. The Psychology of Birth Planning . Schenkman Publishing Company, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967. Page 221. |
|
“If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice that only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering.”-- Nobel Prize winner Dr. James D. Watson. Time Magazine, May 28, 1973, page 104. Also see “Children From the Laboratory.” Prism , May 1973, page 13. |
|
“No newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests, it forfeits the right to live.”-- Nobel Prize winner Dr. Francis Crick. Pacific News Service , January 1978. |
|
“The fetus has not been shown to be nearer to the human being than is the unborn ape. Even the full-term infant must undergo many changes before attaining full status of humanity. Only near the end of the first year of age does a child demonstrate intellectual development, speaking ability, and other attributes that differentiate him significantly from other species.”-- Dr. Robert H. Williams, Washington State Medical School. “Our Role in the Generation, Modification, and Termination of Life.” JAMA, August 11, 1969, pages 914 to 917. |
|
“If we compare a severely defective human infant with a dog or a pig ... we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities ... Only the fact that the defective infant is a member of the species Homo Sapiens leads it to be treated differently from the dog or pig. But species membership alone is not relevant ... If we can put aside the obsolete and erroneous notion of the sanctity of all human life, we may start to look at human life as it really is: at the quality of life that each human being has or can attain.”-- Peter Singer. “Sanctity of Life or Quality of Life?” Pediatrics , July 1983. |
|
“There is little evidence that termination of an infant’s life in the first few months following extraction from the womb could be looked upon as murder ... It would seem to be more ‘inhumane’ to kill an adult chimpanzee than a newborn baby, since the chimpanzee has greater mental awareness. Murder cannot logically apply to a life form with less mental awareness than a primate.”-- Winston L. Duke. “The New Biology.” Reason , August 1972. |
|
“To me it is [morally permissible to withhold treatment from newborns with handicaps]. I don’t see any reason to take $500,000 away from, say, nutrition for other children just to provide life to an organism that has hardly started yet.”-- Harvard University Professor Thomas Snelling, quoted in “Quote of the Month.” National Right to Life News , November 24, 1982, page 2. |
|
“The situation of a newborn baby is very different from that of the same baby, even a few weeks later. At birth the baby is only a potential human being and at that point it is surely the humane and sensible thing that the life of any baby with obvious severe defects, whether of body or brain, should be quietly snuffed out by the doctor or midwife. This should not be a decision referred to the family who are too emotionally involved; though in borderline cases the doctor’s knowledge of the family situation would be one of the factors taken into account.”-- Barbara Smoker, President of the National Secular Society, and Vice-Chairman of the British Humanist Association, on January 22, 1973. Quoted in William Brennan. The Abortion Holocaust, Today’s Final Solution . Landmark Press, 1984. Page 113. |
|
STEP TWO: Extend Abortion to Newborn Babies |
|
“It is reasonable to describe infanticide as post-natal abortion ... Infanticide is actually a very humane thing when you are dealing with misbegotten infants. We might have to encourage it under certain conditionalities of excess population, especially when you’re dealing with defective children.”-- Joseph Fletcher. “Infanticide and the Ethics of Loving Concern.” Infanticide and the Value of Life . Prometheus Books, 1978. Quoted by C. Everett Koop, M.D. “The Slide to Auschwitz.” Human Life Review , Summer 1982, page 36. |
|
“We must evaluate what can really be termed the ‘salvage value.’ This factor is vital in our decisionmaking. What kind of child will result? ... Will life be meaningful to any degree? What is meaningful and to whom? The newborn is an organism with a potential for human qualities, qualities which are as yet nonexistent ... Is life at birth more significant than at the second, fourth, or sixth month of pregnancy? It is not. True, it is closer to gaining the attributes of man, but, as yet, it has only the potential for those qualities. If this difference is true for the normal newborn, how much less significant is it for the newborn who doesn’t even have this potential?”-- Milton Heifetz, M.D. The Right to Die . New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975. Page 51. Quoted by C. Everett Koop, M.D. “The Slide to Auschwitz.” Human Life Review , Summer 1982, page 36. |
|
“Parents are, after all, legally permitted a choice of abortion if the fetus is shown to be severely malformed [with spina bifida, for example]. It is paradoxical that this same choice should be denied them in the case of a premature baby with similar or worse handicaps.”-- ‘Bioethicist’ Mary Warnock, quoted in Nat Hentoff. “Strange Priesthood of Bioethics.” National Right to Life News , March 27, 1986, page 15. |
|
“Most people would prefer to raise children who do not suffer from gross deformities or from several physical, emotional or intellectual handicaps. If it could be shown that there is no moral objection to infanticide, the happiness of society could be significantly and justifiably increased ... A newborn infant does not possess the concept of a conscious self any more than a newborn kitten possesses such a concept ... infanticide during a time interval shortly after birth must be morally acceptable.”-- Michael Tooley. “Abortion and Infanticide.” Philosophy and Public Affairs , January 1972. |
|
“We now “let go” of some babies, notwithstanding the rules against euthanasia. But we do not announce this to the world. Such practice allows the actors to hide from themselves the fact that they have changed or departed from the rule while announcing their strict adherence to the absolute rule of sanctity of life in all cases.”-- Attorney F. Raymond Marks, euthanasia conference participant, quoted in National Right to Life News , April 11, 1985, page 11. |
|
“Infanticide is not a great wrong. I do not want to be construed as condemning women who, under certain circumstances, quietly put their infants to death.”-- ‘Bioethicist’ Beverly Wildung Harrison, quoted in David H. Andrusko. “Abortion and Infanticide: Is There a Difference?” National Right to Life News , May 2, 1985, page 2. |
|
“American opinion is rapidly moving toward the position where parents who have an abnormal child may be considered socially irresponsible.”-- Dr. James Sorenson, Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences, Boston University, at a symposium entitled “Prenatal Diagnosis and its Impact on Society.” Quoted by C. Everett Koop, M.D. “The Slide to Auschwitz.” Human Life Review , Summer 1982, page 22. |
|
“No child [should] be admitted into the society of the living who would be certain to suffer any social handicap -- for example, any physical or mental defect that would prevent marriage or would make others tolerate his company only from the sense of mercy.”-- Millard Everett, Ideals of Life . Quoted by C. Everett Koop, M.D. “The Slide to Auschwitz.” Human Life Review , Summer 1982. |
|
“The NICU [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] is used right along with liver transplants as examples of how resources are squandered in our society.”-- Johnny Cox, an ‘ethicist’ at the Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Washington. Quoted in The [Spokane] Spokesman-Review and the Spokane Chronicle , August 15, 1987. Also described in Anti-Life Report. “Born as a Non-Person?” ALL About Issues , November-December 1987, page 12. |
|
“Speaking at a recent conference of the Hemlock Society -- an organization whose primary purpose is the legalization of death by choice -- Dr. Joseph Fletcher, the ‘father of situation ethics,’ reminisced about the days when both he and Margaret Sanger joined the Euthanasia Society of America, ‘thus linking the two [abortion and euthanasia] causes so to speak -- the right to be selective about parenthood and the right to be selective about living.’ Fletcher explained, ‘We’ve added death control to birth control as a part of the ethos of life style in our society.’” -- Joseph Fletcher, quoted in Rita Marker. “School Based Clinics: A Movement to Create a New Society.” Human Life Center Report , 1988, page 25. |
|
“Dr. Bob Hall, chief neonatologist at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, characterized the practice of permitting deformed or defective newborns to die by withholding treatment and nourishment as a ‘commonplace’ phenomenon. He estimated that it accounts for around 14 percent of all deaths occurring in special care nurseries throughout the United States.”-- Claudia MacLachlan and Roger Signor. “Baby Starvation Illegal Here, Rothman Says.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch , May 21, 1982, page 6A. |
|
STEP THREE: Prepare Society for Future Involuntary Euthanasia |
|
“A death pill will be available and in all likelihood will be obligatory by the end of this century. In the end, I can see the State taking over and insisting on euthanasia.”-- Dr. John Goundry. The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin , August 13, 1977. |
|
“How far should we defend the right of a parent to produce a child that is painfully diseased, condemned to an early death, or mentally retarded? In our society, a parent does not have the right to withhold an education from his children. Does he then have a right to produce a child that is uneducable?”-- J.F. Crow, “Conclusion, Advances in Human Genetics and Their Impact on Society.” Birth Defects , September 1972, page 16. |
|
“One may anticipate further development of these roles as the problems of birth control and birth selection (abortion) are extended inevitably to death selection and death control, whether by the individual or by society ...”-- California Medicine editorial, September 1970. |
|
“It used to be easy to know what we wanted for our children, and now the best for our children might mean deciding which ones to kill. We’ve always wanted the best for our grandparents, and now that might mean killing them.”-- Dr. William Gaylin, professor of psychiatry and law at Columbia University, addressing the American Association of University Women, June 10, 1984. |
|
“We start off with dispatching the terminally ill and the hopelessly comatose, and then perhaps our guidelines might be extended to the severely senile, the very old and decrepit and maybe even young, profoundly retarded children.”-- Dr. Mark Siegler, Director, Center of Clinical Ethics, University of Chicago. Time Magazine, 3/31/1986. |
|
“Eventually, when public opinion is prepared for it, no child shall be admitted into the society of the living who would be certain to suffer any social handicap -- for example, any physical or mental defect that would prevent marriage or would make others tolerate his company only from a sense of mercy ... Life in early infancy is very close to nonexistence, and admitting a child into our society is almost like admitting one from potential to actual existence, and viewed in this way, only normal life should be accepted.”-- George Will commentary entitled “Death With Dignity.” Cincinnati Post , May 20, 1974. |
|
On December 4, 1971, Joseph Fletcher, at the Fourth Euthanasia Conference, suggested that in the future defective children should be killed by the State over their parent’s objections “for the good of society.” |
This
process inevitably takes place in three steps;
(1) Dehumanize the handicapped newborn;
(2) Extend abortion to newborn babies; and
(3) Prepare society to accept the idea of future
involuntary euthanasia of the adult handicapped.
As
always, the pro-death ethic ‘progresses’ along its carcass-strewn trail one
inevitable step at a time. If we don’t want to waste the valuable tissue from
dead aborted babies and from live aborted babies, we certainly don’t want to
waste the tissue from newborns who are going to die anyhow.
Take,
for example, what the American Atheists heartlessly call “little monsters,”
those babies born with no cerebral cortex.
This
rare condition is known as anencephaly, and occurs in about one out of 30,000
births. The baby is born without the main (upper) mass of the brain, but does
possess the brain stem, which controls basic body functions. The baby can thus
breathe, move, feel pain, and cry. Anencephalic babies do not usually live more
than three months. Mortality is about 90 percent at one week, although some
live several years. One family in Connecticut has successfully raised two
anencephalic children past the age of five.
As
these fatally-afflicted babies slowly die, so do all of their organs. By the
time they are declared ‘brain dead,’ these organs are not suitable for
transplantation.
California’s
Loma Linda Hospital sees these little ones as a Heaven- sent opportunity for
research and transplantation. This research center was at one point actually
keeping these babies alive so that their organs would be fresh for removal when
a suitable recipient was found. They would then be killed (painlessly, of
course), and the organs would be removed from their sad little bodies.
Perhaps
one reason these poor babies are such easy targets for harvesting is their
unattractive appearance. Many anencephalic newborns have no skull above the
eyebrows or have cranial extrusions of admittedly rather strange appearance.
Of
course, there is one troublesome little detail (nothing really major actually):
These anencephalic babies are still alive.
Now
what can we do to get around this irritating little obstacle?
Why,
we could just redefine “death” and then classify anencephalic newborns as
“dead!” And why not? Unborn babies are not alive, so now let’s define others
the same way!
At
the 1990 annual meeting of the National Medical Association in Las Vegas, Dr.
Mark Evans seriously proposed that there was a distinct favorable “...
possibility of creating a new legal definition to permit physicians to declare
anencephalic neonates ‘brain absent’ and therefore legally dead, so their
organs might be harvested for transplantation.”[41]
Notice
the use of dehumanizing words by Evans: he does not call the babies “newborns;”
they are “neonates.”
Naturally,
the lawyers are getting into this strange and terrible act as well. The first
attempt to declassify anencephalic babies out of human existence occurred in
February 1986, as California State Senator Milton Marks introduced Senate Bill
2018, which stated simply: “An individual born with the condition of
anencephaly is dead.”
The
‘different’ are always easy targets in a morally sick society: Lepers, the
handicapped, the retarded, Blacks, Jews, and now poor babies who are born with
an odd or alien appearance through no fault of their own.
Nazi
doctor Dr. Julius Hallervorden defended himself at the Nuremberg War Criminal
Trials by stating to the Court; “I heard that they were going to do that and so
I went up to them: “Look here now boys, if you are going to kill all these
people, at least take the brains out, so that the material could be utilized.”“
Essentially
identical language was used by the United States National Institutes for Health
forty years later in their October 1988 Draft Report of the Human Fetal Tissue
Transplant Panel ; “Inasmuch as it is cadaver tissue [from abortions] we are
concerned with, and inasmuch as it would ordinarily be disposed of; and
inasmuch as research on this tissue holds the promise of saving countless lives
and alleviating the suffering of countless others, we find the use of such
tissues acceptable.”
Senator
Brock Adams [D.-Wa.] said “We can either use the tissue in what we know to be
lifesaving research, or we can bury it. That is the choice.” And syndicated columnist
James J. Kilpatrick concluded that “Out of the sadness of abortion, which takes
one potential life, at least we should salvage the saving of another.”[42]
This
language is frighteningly reminiscent of that used by Nazi ‘doctors’ in the
concentration camp medical experimentation stations of World War II. Perhaps
our latter-day medical professionals and politicians are so wrapped up in the
glamorous propaganda of the anti-life movement that they cannot properly see
either forward or into the past.
“With great advances in life-support technology and organ transplantation, the dead today do indeed have much ‘protein’ to offer us -- in the form of organs and body parts. We are the ‘Neo-cannibals.’”-- Kathleen Stein, Omni Magazine.[43]
The
depths of the uncharted waters into which we have ventured, ill-prepared, are
indicated by the fact that not even the words “life” and “death” have solid
meanings anymore.
The
term “death” has traditionally and logically meant the total and irreversible
cessation of breathing and circulation. Loma Linda Hospital and other medical
groups would now like to create a new definition of death purely for their own
convenience, whereby human beings who are breathing and have heartbeats may be
sustained for the sole purpose of ransacking their organs, yet still be
classified as ‘dead.’
This
new definition, usually called ‘brain death,’ is the “... irreversible
cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem,” used
“when respirators and other treatments render the traditional standard
unreliable.”
Just
as pro-abortionists used the mighty weapon of ‘mystagoguery’ to confuse people
as to when life begins , pro-infanticide activists are now muddying the water
as to when life ends .
Loma
Linda Hospital, other health care institutions, and many leading ‘bioethicists’
can now justify reclassifying anencephalic newborn babies and other infants who
are breathing and whose hearts are beating as “dead.” Therefore, there is
absolutely no reason whatever why comatose adults meeting the same description
may not also be relegated to the fate of the ‘new unliving.’
The
possibilities for Newspeak and misleading verbiage in this new field are almost
unlimited.
In
an article comically entitled “Proposals to Enlist the Dead in Research,” Jim
Detjen proposes the following ‘daffynitions;’[44]
“Neomort:
A body sustained by artificial life support systems to be used for drug
research, development of new surgical techniques, practice for new surgeons and
as a storage place for blood and organs.
Neomortoriums:
Places for the storage of brain-dead bodies because such storage places would
solve the dilemma of storing certain organs outside of the bodies.”
Willard
Gaylin, former President of the Institute of Society, Ethics, and the Life
Sciences (the “Hastings Institute”), would also like to see comatose adult
persons (“neomorts”) stockpiled in special repositories (“bioemporiums”) for
the purposes of organ harvesting and live experimentation.[45]
Another
author describes Gaylin’s objectives; “Various illnesses could be induced in
neomorts, and various treatments tried, thus protecting live patients from
being “guinea pigs” in experimental procedures and therapies ... Neomorts would
provide a steady supply of blood, since they could be drained regularly ...
Bone marrow, cartilage, and skin could be harvested, and hormones, antitoxins,
and antibodies manufactured in neomorts ... To do this, [Gaylin] notes, we
would have to accept the concept of “personhood” as separate from “aliveness”
for adults, as we do now with fetuses” [emphasis added].[45]
Perhaps
Dr. Robin Cook was influenced by the horrible nature of Gaylin’s views when he
wrote his bestselling medical thriller Coma .
“Why should a woman who finds having a baby inconvenient be allowed to abort her child, while the aged person whose every moment is a nightmare is forbidden self-liberation?”-- Commentator Harry Schwartz, USA Today .[46]
We
in the United States need only to look to India to see the future of
infanticide in this country.
Girls
are considered to be a burden in many areas of India for several reasons. They
leave the home and their parents, when old, therefore have nobody to care for
them. Girls also require a substantial dowry in order to be considered eligible
for marriage.
For
these reasons, female infanticide has become startlingly widespread in India.
Some estimates put the total number of cases of girl- killing as high as
250,000 per year . The attitude of families that kill their infant girls is
identical to that of pro-aborts in the United States. As one 26-year old woman
told India Today , “If I and my husband have the right to have a child, we also
have the right to kill it if it happens to be a daughter and we decide we
cannot afford it. Outsiders and the Government have no right to poke their
noses into this.”[47]
Absolutely
classic anti-life logic! The babies are usually killed by forcing them to
inhale coarse rice grains. In other cases, husbands plant a poisonous madar
plant upon learning that their wives are pregnant. By the time the wife
delivers, the plant will be ready to kill the baby if it is a girl.
Our
country’s attitude towards children is almost as cavalier as that shown by
alleged ‘parents’ in India.
How
long will it be before madar plants are a commonplace sight in our nation’s
picture-perfect suburbs?
==========================================
“They call them bad babies.
They didn’t mean to be bad
but who does”
-- Miller Williams poem entitled “The Ones That Are Thrown Out.”[48]
[1] Dr. R.A. Gallop, quoted in the Pro-Life Resource Manual , page 57.
[2] Leo Alexander, M.D. “Medical Science Under Dictatorship.” The New England Journal of Medicine , July 14, 1949.
[3] Nat Hentoff. Series on the ‘Baby Doe’ infanticide cases in the December 6, 1983 to January 10, 1984 issues of The Village Voice . This entire series is reprinted in the Spring 1984 issue of Human Life Review , pages 73 to 104.
[4] Abortionist Warren Hern of Boulder, Colorado, quoted by the Denver Post , February 27, 1977.
[5] Debra Braun. “Murder Charge Dropped Against Abortionist.” National Right to Life News , March 14, 1985, page 1.
[6] Quoted in “Judge in Virginia Trespass Case Acknowledges ‘State-Sanctioned Killing.’” The Advocate (publication of Advocates for Life Ministries, Portland, Oregon), June 1986, page 3.
[7] “Abortion Clinic Staff Worker Gives Her Excuses.” Life Advocate (publication of Advocates for Life Ministries, Portland, Oregon), April 1992, page 21.
[8] Magda Denes. “Performing Abortions.” Commentary , October 1976, pages 33 to 37. A truly frightening and profoundly sickening article by a doctor who observes and describes in graphic detail a number of saline abortions and their results. She acknowledges that abortion is killing, but a type of “necessary” killing. Also see the “Letters” sections in the December 1976 and February 1977 issues of Commentary .
[9] Norman Mailer on the David Frost Show. Quoted in “Norman Mailer Speaks Out on Sex and AIDS.” American Family Association Journal , March 1992, page 3.
[10] Dr. Frank M. Guttman, quoted in “Infanticide.” National Right to Life News , April 1979, page 5.
[11] Nick Thimmesch. “The Abortion Culture: My Turn.” Newsweek Magazine, July 9, 1973. Page 9.
[12] Margery W. Shaw, M.D. “Genetic Counseling.” Science , Volume 184, May 17, 1974, page 751. Available as Reprint #2009 from the Hastings Institute, address given above. This is a noteworthy short article if only for the author’s profoundly and unforgivably naive assertion that “I am not afraid that genetic screening will lead to genocide, nor that abortion will lead to infanticide, as many have warned. If we need checks on our behavior the law will provide them.” Available as Reprint #2005 from the Institute of Science, Ethics and the Life Sciences, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706.
[13] Melinda Delahoyde. Fighting for Life: Defending the Newborn’s Right to Live . Servant Books, Post Office Box 8617, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48107. 1984, 81 pages, $2.95. Page 11.
[14] Charles J. Sykes. “Medical Nightmares: German Doctors/ American Doctors.” Milwaukee: Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 1987, pages 16 and 17.
[15] As described in Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s address at the New York State legislative building on March 17, 1981.
[16] Anne Nicol Gaylor. Abortion is a Blessing . New York, New York: Psychological Dimensions, Inc, Publishers. 1975, 124 pages. Pages 81 and 84.
[17] Jeffrey Perlman. “Waddill Trial Has Heavy Impact.” Los Angeles Times , May 15, 1978. Part I, page 3. Also see Dexter Duggan. “California Abortionist Testifies in His Own Defense.” Life Advocate , May/June 1979, pages 14 to 16. Also see Susan Fraker and Janet Huck. “The Trial of Dr. Waddill.” Newsweek Magazine, April 3, 1978, page 35. Also see “The Ordeal of a Divided Jury.” Time Magazine, May 22, 1978, page 24.
[18] The Laufe abortion/infanticide is described in Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, M.D. Whatever Happened to the Human Race? Fleming H. Revell Publishers, Old Tappan, New Jersey. 1976, pages 46 and 47. This incident was also described in the November 1, 1974 issue of the Pittsburgh Press .
[19] Dr. Victor G. Rosenblum, Professor of Law, Northwestern University. Quoted on page 8 of The Silent Holocaust , by John Powell, S.J.
[20] David K. Stevenson and Ernie W.D. Young. American Journal of Diseases of Children . May 1990.
[21] James M. Gustafson. “Mongolism, Parental Desires, and the Right to Life.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine . 16(1973), pages 529 to 577. This case is also described on page 45 of the Spring 1982 Human Life Review .
[22] Robert J. Lifton. The Nazi Doctors . New York: Basic Books, 1986.
[23] Fredric Wertham, M.D. A Sign for Cain -- An Exploration of Human Violence . Warner Paperback Library, 1969, page 175.
[24] For more information on spina bifida babies and the ‘quality of life,’ see Leslie Bond. “Federal Court Allows Suit to Continue in Case of Oklahoma Infanticide.” National Right to Life News , July 16, 1987, page 2 and 9. Mary Jane Owen, MSW. “Assessing the Value of Life With Handicaps.” National Right to Life News , April 11, 1985, page 13. An article explaining the infamous “quality of life” mathematical formula. David H. Andrusko. “Death By the Numbers.” National Right to Life News , May 16, 1985, page 2. “Gauging a Baby’s “Net Worth.”“ National Right to Life News , May 30, 1985, page 10. Letter by two doctors in Pediatrics deploring “quality of life” formulas. Leslie Bond. “Federal Court Allows Suit to Continue in Case of Oklahoma Infanticide.” National Right to Life News , July 16, 1987, page 2 and 9.
[25] Debra Braun. “Oklahoma Hospital Allegedly Withholds Life-Saving Treatment from Handicapped Babies.” National Right to Life News , May 16, 1985, page 1.
[26] Richard H. Gross, M.D., Alan Cox, M.D., Ruth Tatyrek, MSW, Michael Pollay, M.D., and William A. Barnes, M.D. “Early Management and Decision Making for the Treatment of Myelomeningocele.” Pediatrics (Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics), October 1983.
[27] C. Everett Koop. “The Family With a Handicapped Newborn.” Human Life Review , Winter 1981, pages 116 to 123.
[28] Joseph R. Stanton, M.D. “From Feticide to Infanticide.” Human Life Review , Summer 1982 pages 35 to 45.
[29] Looseleaf booklet entitled “Organizing for Action.” Prepared by Vicki Z. Kaplan for the National Abortion Rights Action League, 250 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019. 51 pages, no date.
[30] Joseph Fletcher. Humanhood: Essays in Biomedical Ethics . Prometheus Books, 1979, page 142. Quoted in Joseph R. Stanton, M.D. “From Feticide to Infanticide.” The Human Life Review , Summer 1982, page 40.
[31] “Medicide: The Goodness of Planned Death. An Interview With Dr. Jack Kevorkian.” Free Inquiry [“An International Secular Humanist Magazine”], Fall 1991, pages 14 to 18.
[32] Dr. Christiaan Barnard. Omni Magazine, March 1986. Also quoted in Jim McFadden’s Introduction to the Spring 1986 issue of The Human Life Review , page 6.
[33] Malcolm Muggeridge. “The Humane Holocaust.” Human Life Review , Winter 1980, pages 13 to 22.
[34] Diana Crane. The Sanctity of Social Life: The Physician’s Treatment of Critically Ill Patients . New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 1975, page 205. Also quoted in Gary Crum. “Nazi Bioethics and a Doctor’s Defense.” The Human Life Review , Summer 1982, page 66.
[35] Jack Kevorkian, M.D. “A Fail-Safe Model For Justifiable Medically-Assisted Suicide (Medicide).” American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry , February 1992. Also quoted in Associated Press. “Doctor Asks Suicide-Aid Network.” The Oregonian , January 23, 1992, page A11.
[36] Harvard University Professor Thomas Snelling, quoted in Steven R. Valentine. “Briefs Ordered Sealed in “Infant Doe” Appeal Case.” National Right to Life News , November 24, 1982, page 2.
[37] Obstetrician Walter Owens. Transcript of April 13, 1982, No. JU-8204-038A (Circuit Court of Monroe County, Indiana).
[38] Anne Bannon, M.D. “The Case of the Bloomington Baby.” Human Life Review , Fall 1982, page 68.
[39] Mary Arnold. “Some Doctors Feel They Have the Right to Kill Defective Children.” Catholic Twin Circle , August 23, 1983. Page 4.
[40] Johnny Cox, ‘ethicist’ at the Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, quoted in The Spokesman-Review and the Spokane Chronicle , August 15, 1987. Also described in Anti-Life Report. “Born as a Non-Person?” ALL About Issues , November-December 1987, page 12.
[41] This proposal was also published in the October 1-14, 1990 issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology News .
[42] Syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick. “Fetal Tissue Issue Will Haunt Bush.” The Oregonian , April 26, 1992, page B4.
[43] Kathleen Stein. “Last Rights.” Omni Magazine, September 1987, page 34.
[44] Jim Detjen. “Proposals to Enlist the Dead in Research.” Philadelphia Enquirer , August 12, 1986.
[45] World Trends and Forecasts. “Recycling Human Bodies to Save Lives.” The Futurist , April 1976, page 108.
[46] Commentator Harry Schwartz. “Suicide Is a Basic Right.” USA Today , May 20, 1992, page 10A.
[47] Leslie Bond. “Female Infanticide: An Indian Holocaust.” National Right to Life News , December 4, 1986, page 3.
[48] Miller Williams poem. “The Ones That Are Thrown Out.” Quoted in National Right to Life News , March 27, 1986, page 15.
==========================================
Biblical Reflections on Modern Medicine . This 12-page monthly magazine consists of detailed comments and essays on recent developments in the field of medicine from a Scriptural standpoint, with an emphasis on those procedures that threaten human life: Infanticide, abortion, and euthanasia. The subscription rate is $14.00 annually. Write to Covenant Distributors, Box 4009, Martinez, Georgia 30917-4009.
Christopher de Vinck. The Power of the Powerless: A Brother’s Legacy of Love . New York: Doubleday. 1988, 156 pages. Oliver de Vinck was born blind, mute, crippled, and helpless. Instead of letting him die as most families would these days because his “quality of life” was too low, they took him home where he lived upstairs for 33 years. Despite the fact that he almost never even moved, he served as an enduring example of hope, not only to his family but to many others as well.
Eugene F. Diamond, M.D. This Curette for Hire . $3.95. Published by the ACTA Foundation, 4848 North Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois 60640. 1977, 141 pages. Order from: Life Issues Bookshelf, Sun Life, Thaxton, Virginia 24174, telephone: (703) 586-4898. The author discusses the deterioration of medical ethics and the critical role of the doctor in all anti-life activities: Abortion, fetal experimentation, sterilization, euthanasia, infanticide, sex therapy, abortifacients, and more.
Philip K. Dick. The Golden Man . New York: Berkeley Publishing Corporation, 1980. 336 pages. This anthology of short stories includes a fascinating little tale set in the near future: “The Pre-Persons,” pages 303 to 331. It is the story of what life is like for children and dissenters once Planned Parenthood (now all-powerful) has determined that life begins when a person can perform algebraic mathematics -- at the age of twelve. Up until this time, abortion is legal. Mr. Dick must have struck a raw pro-abortion nerve with this story, because states in his Afterword that he received large volumes of unsigned hate mail and threats from pro-abortion organizations. His story is an absolute chiller.
Nancy Dubler and David Nimmons. Ethics on Call: A Medical Ethicist Shows How to Take Charge of Life-and-Death Choices . Harmony Books, 210 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. 1992, 405 pages. Reviewed on page 2,819 of the May 27, 1992 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association . A revealing look at the day-to-day decisions that go on in a large hospital. The author, who has advised medical personnel on many occasions, describes specific cases, including passive euthanasia, making critical decisions for newborns, notification of a person whose spouse tests HIV-positive, and questions of sustained care. The author also examines the agendas, habits, and “circles of consent” that interact in such decisions.
Sherman Elias. M.D., and George J. Annas, J.D. Reproductive Genetics & the Law . Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, Inc. 1987, 310 pages. The medical and legal backgrounds of some of the hottest topics in artificial reproductive technologies today: Newborn genetic screening, genetic counseling, prenatal diagnosis, treatment (and nontreatment) of handicapped newborns, “noncoital reproduction,” frozen embryos, and gene and fetal therapy.
Greenhaven Press. Death and Dying: Opposing Viewpoints . Greenhaven Press Opposing Viewpoints Series, Post Office Box 289009, San Diego, California 92128-9009. 1987, 215 pages. Each section includes several essays by leading authorities on both sides of each issue. The questions asked are: “How Should One Cope With Death?;” “How Can Suicide Be Prevented?;” “Is Infant Euthanasia Ever Justified?;” “Should Euthanasia Be Allowed?;” and “Do the Dying Need Alternative Care?” Authors include Helga Kuhse, Melinda Delahoyde, Peter Singer, Charles Krauthammer, and David H. Andrusko. This topic is covered by a series of books, beginning with a basic set of essays entitled Sources (priced at $39.95) and continuing with an additional and updated annual series of essays. A catalog is available from the above address and can be obtained by calling 1-(800) 231-5163.
Greenhaven Press. Euthanasia: Opposing Viewpoints . Greenhaven Press Opposing Viewpoints Series, Post Office Box 289009, San Diego, California 92128-9009. 1989, 231 pages. Five sections featuring essays written by leading activists on both sides of the euthanasia debate: “Is Euthanasia Ethical?;” “What Policy Should Guide Euthanasia?;” “What Criteria Should Influence Euthanasia Decisions?;” “Who Should Make the Euthanasia Decision?;” and “Is Infant Euthanasia Ethical?” This book provides excellent debating and research background for the anti-euthanasia activist. A catalog is available from the above address and can be obtained by calling 1-(800) 231-5163.
Germain Grisez and Joseph Boyle. Life and Death and Liberty and Justice . Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979. Reviewed by Richard Stith on pages 185 to 189 of the Summer 1979 issue of the International Review of Natural Family Planning . An extraordinarily detailed and broad examination of all of the primary areas of contention in the euthanasia battle. Considered by most to be a ‘must read’ for serious anti-euthanasia activists.
Dennis J. Horan and Melinda Delahoyde (editors). Infanticide and the Handicapped Newborn . Brigham Young University Press, 1982, 127 pages. Reviewed by David Andrusko on page 15 of the March 24, 1983 issue of National Right to Life News and by Charles E. Rice on page 22 of the April 1983 ALL About Issues . An excellent collection of nine essays by Dennis Horan, Jerome LeJeune, M.D., C. Everett Koop, Eugene F. Diamond, M.D., and others.
Issues in Law and Medicine . This periodical contains information and updates on the legal and medical issues pertaining to medical treatment for handicapped and disabled persons of all ages. Edited by James Bopp, Jr., of the National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled. $24.00 for six bimonthly issues, and $40.00 for a two-year subscription. Write to the National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled, Post Office Box 1586, Terre Haute, Indiana 47808-1586.
D. Gareth Jones. Brave New People: Ethical Issues at the Commencement of Life . Eerdmans Publishing Company, 255 Jefferson Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503, telephone: (616) 459-4591. 1985, 225 pages, $8.95. This book was so ‘controversial’ (which means that Leftist censors didn’t like it), that it was withdrawn from the market after its original release in 1984. The author addresses complicated issues that apply to the beginning of human life: In-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, cloning, and genetic tinkering.
Eike-Henner W. Kluge. The Practice of Death . London: Yale University Press. 1975, 250 pages, $3.95. The author ties together in a general manner the philosophy and tactics of all of the pro-death movements: Abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia, and ‘senicide.’ Although the book is nearly twenty years old, it is still relevant today.
Sheldon B. Korones, M.D. High Risk Newborn Infants: The Basis for Intensive Nursing Care . C.V. Mosby Company, St. Louis, 1981. 3rd Edition.
Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer. Should the Baby Live?: The Problem of $8.95. The authors begin their Preface with the words “This book contains conclusions which some readers will find disturbing. We think that some infants with severe disabilities should be killed.” This pretty much says it all. Those who want to read past the first two sentences will find that all human life is not equal (it all depends upon your quality of life); that it is all right to kill those newborns who do not measure up to the quality of life formulas; and that the “sanctity of life” doctrine, while it does have its good points, is not really relevant to today’s world. This book is an excellent summation of the utilitarian ethic applied to the weakest and most helpless born human beings of all -- the handicapped newborn.
Carol Levine (Editor). Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Bio-Ethical Issues . Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc., Guilford, Connecticut. 1984, 297 pages. Leading thinkers on both sides of bioethical issues express their opinions in scholarly essays on subjects including abortion, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, involuntary sterilization of the retarded, informed consent, active euthanasia, withholding treatment from handicapped newborns, suicide, the insanity defense, animal experimentation, prisoners volunteering for research, justifiable deception in research, organ harvesting from the dead, and genetic engineering. A good primer on the bioethical issues.
Jeff Lyon. Playing God in the Nursery . New York: Norton Press, 1984. 340 pages, $18.95. Reviewed by Carleton Sherwood in the April 11, 1985 National Right to Life News . This is perhaps the most frightening inside look at the true anti-life mentality ever written. The author has reversed the roles of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ completely. He tries to reconcile the role of doctor as both healer and killer in the nursery as he decides which babies have sufficient “quality of life” to go on living -- and which do not. The story revolves around the struggle over whether or not to keep a Down’s Syndrome baby alive. The pediatrician who tries to get a court order to feed the little baby is described as “intimidating,” “threatening,” and “a sadist.” The author cruelly refers to the poor infant himself as a “bad baby,” although none of his troubles are his fault. Those people who want the baby to die of starvation and thirst are, of course, “courageous, loving, caring, decent, ethical,” and on and on ad nauseam . This book is written by an author whose outlook is so warped and twisted that, hopefully, it will literally terrify many pro-life activists into action.
Effie A. Quay. And Now Infanticide . Sun Life: Thaxton, Virginia. 1980, 64 pages. $11.00. Reviewed by Paulette Joyer on page 8 of the November 24, 1983 issue of National Right to Life News .
Earl Shelp. Born to Die? New York: Free Press, 1986. 206 pages, $19.95. A candid endorsement of euthanasia and infanticide for all the usual reasons, including ‘quality of life’ and cost containment. Reviewed by Rosemary Bottcher on pages 5 and 6 of the October 23, 1986 issue of National Right to Life News .
Robert and Peggy Stinson. The Long Dying of Baby Andrew . Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1983. 384 pages, $16.00. Reviewed by Rosemary Bottcher in the April 11, 1985 National Right to Life News . This is the story of two alleged “parents” who do everything they can to rid themselves of a newborn baby who doesn’t meet their high expectations. Perhaps this book should have been entitled How We Finally Escaped the Brat Who Wouldn’t Die . The Stinsons bitterly regret not aborting the baby because, as they said, “Once the baby breathed, all choices were lost.” The baby was born healthy but premature, and, by all accounts, would have grown up perfectly healthy. But the parents did everything in their power to kill him; they reduced his oxygen, refused a simple procedure that would have allowed him to breathe easier, and tried to get him transferred to a hospital that would kill him outright. At last, the doctors trying so hard to save him simply gave up, because too many people wanted him to die. He was dumped unattended in a corner. Nobody held him. Nobody fed him. Nobody loved him. At six months of age, the unloved little boy finally did the only thing that he could to make his parents happy -- He died.
Michael Tooley. Abortion and Infanticide . Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford, England OX2 6DP. 1983, 440 pages. A very detailed and deep examination of the more obtuse and exotic moral aspects of infanticide, abortion, and the many connections between the two. Recommended for those people who have been in the pro-life movement for some time and who want a really good look at the foundation of ethics and morals of the pro-life and anti-life philosophies.
United States Government. Neonatal Intensive Care for Low Birthweight Infants: Costs and Effectiveness . Reviews the evidence on the effectiveness of treating low birthweight babies in special hospital units, and examines recent changes in related technology and medical practice and long-term consequences of treatment. Serial Number 052-003-01089-5, 1987, 83 pages, $3.75. Order by mail from Superintendent of Documents, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, or by telephone from (202) 783-3238.
Leonard J. Weber. Who Shall Live?: The Dilemma of Severely Handicapped Children and Its Meaning for Other Moral Questions . Paulist Press, 545 Island Road, Ramsey, New Jersey 07446. 1976, 140 pages. A basic examination of the fundamental moral questions surrounding the indirect euthanasia of handicapped newborns: The framework of the question, the ethical context, the conflicting values, the value of human life, the mechanics of the decision, and the role of the public.
Robert F. Weir. Selective Nontreatment of Handicapped Newborns: Moral Dilemmas in Neonatal Medicine . Oxford University Press, 1985. 292 pages, $27.95. Reviewed by Carl R. Schmahl on pages 48 to 50 of the April 11, 1986 issue of National Review . This author takes the ‘progressive’ (slippery slope) view that some infants are going to lead ‘lives not worth living,’ and should therefore be allowed to die of starvation and thirst. Although he would be extremely strict in his criteria for such killings, he still makes a very smooth presentation of all of the anti-life arguments for infanticide, which will be very useful for those who want to oppose the people who advocate this type of silent killing. Mr. Weir performs a great service in pointing out the almost complete lack of standards used to determine which infants will receive life-sustaining medical treatments and which will not.
Wolf Wolfenberger. The New Genocide of Handicapped and Afflicted People . Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Training Institute. 1987, 114 pages. Reviewed by Julie Grimstad on page 46 of the May 1990 ALL About Issues . This little volume deals with the progressive expansion of “deathmaking” and its ties to the anti-life mentality.
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