Pulling Back the Curtain on the Mercy Killing of Newborns
In Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, two doctors from the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands outline the circumstances in which doctors in their hospital have, in 22 cases over seven years, carried out euthanasia on newborn infants. All of these cases were reported to a district attorney's office in the Netherlands. None of the doctors were prosecuted.
Eduard Verhagen and Pieter Sauer divide into three groups the newborns for whom decisions about ending life might be made.
The first consists of infants who would die soon after birth even if all existing medical resources were employed to prolong their lives.
In the second group are infants who require intensive care, such as a respirator, to keep them alive, and for whom the expectations regarding their future are "very grim." These are infants with severe brain damage. If they can survive beyond intensive care, they will still have a very poor quality of life.
The third group includes infants with a "hopeless prognosis" and who also are victims of "unbearable suffering." For example, in the third group was "a child with the most serious form of spina bifida," the failure of the spinal cord to form and close properly. Yet infants in group three may no longer be dependent on intensive care.
It is this third group that creates the controversy because their lives cannot be ended simply by withdrawing intensive care. Instead, at the University Medical Center Groningen, if suffering cannot be relieved and no improvement can be expected, the physicians will discuss with the parents whether this is a case in which death "would be more humane than continued life." If the parents agree that this is the case, and the team of physicians also agrees -- as well as an independent physician not otherwise associated with the patient -- the infant's life may be ended.
American "pro-life" groups will no doubt say that this is just another example of the slippery slope that the Netherlands began to slide down once it permitted voluntary euthanasia 20 years ago. But before they begin denouncing the Groningen doctors, they should take a look at what is happening in the United States.
One thing is undisputed: Infants with severe problems are allowed to die in the U.S. These are infants in the first two of the three groups identified by Verhagen and Sauer. Some of them -- those in the second group -- can live for many years if intensive care is continued. Nevertheless, U.S. doctors, usually in consultation with parents, make decisions to withdraw intensive care. This happens openly, in Catholic as well as non-Catholic hospitals.
