Church Backs Calls for Severely Disabled Babies to be Killed at Birth

The Church of England, parent to the Anglican and Episcopal churches, has a Bishop advocating the euthanasia of disabled children at birth. The cost of saving them is apparently too great. Besides, families of disabled children will be so much better off without having to deal with such inconveniences. Not surprisingly the UK Disabled People's Council is up in arms.

"How can the Church of England say that Christian compassion includes killing of disabled babies either through the withdrawing or withholding of treatment or by active euthanasia?

"It is not for doctors or indeed anyone else to determine whether a baby's life is worthwhile simply on the grounds of impairment or health condition."

Hey, the cost is the issue. One must justify one's worth to society to not be considered subhuman and the medical ethics people are just the best choice for determining who should get the bullet in the head for the sake of us all.

"Great caution should be exercised in brining questions of cost into the equation when considering what treatment might be provided," he wrote.

"The principle of justice inevitably means that the potential cost of treatment itself, the longer term costs of health care and education and opportunity cost to the NHS in terms of saving other lives have to be considered."

Who pays the piper calls the tune and euthanasia follows socialized medicine like poverty follows drug addiction and ethics trumps morality when the Church abandons the teaching of scripture.

The article gives the anecdotal evidence of a premature baby surviving only to have the parents divorce years later and being unable to care for the child. Conversely I offer Team Hoyt, the father and son marathon team.

Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-and-son team from Massachusetts who together compete just about continuously in marathon races. And if they're not in a marathon they are in a triathlon — that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America.

It's a remarkable record of exertion — all the more so when you consider that Rick can't walk or talk.

Although Rick was born severely disabled the resulting sporting activity that his father engaged in because of him actually extended the father's life some 15 years by delaying effects of heart disease as a result of his athletic activity. Activity he would not have participated in had Rick not come home from the hospital. If doctors and ethics professionals are to determine our fates by our economic value we are just no different than the Ubermenchen of the Nationalist Socialist Party that gassed millions of useless individuals last century.

tracked at Basil's Blog

Disability Blog Carnival #4 at Diary of a Goldfish
See the church's defence here.





pro-life, Christianity, Economics, politics, socialized medicine