By Matt for the TIB Network:
Hugh Hewitt got his underwear in a bunch over what he perceived as a lack of blogger response to this story about a panel of doctors in the Netherlands that decide whether or not to euthenize babies. I think the reason why that is is that Hugh was right when he said:There are three kinds of people in the world: Those who will react with horror and alarm to this story; those who will applaud it; and those who will shrug it off as of no interest to them. I am uncertain which of the latter two groups is in worse moral condition.I suggest that the conservative blogoshpere is so completely horrified that they are shocked. I know I was. I had to let the impact of the story sink in for a couple of days before I could coherently address the story.
The Groningen Protocol is nothing more than the arrogance displayed by Alec Baldwin (Arec Baldrin?) in the movie "Malice" when he declared, "I am God." How arrogant? Consider this:
In August, the main Dutch doctors' association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people "with no free will," including children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.The question that has to be asked is whether or not we have the right to make these decisions. Some (liberals?) will say that we do because we're smart enough. "Smarts" isn't what is required here, in my opinion. Neither is emotional response. I'm not sure what is called for in this case, but I'm sure mere mortal humans don't possess it.
It appears that the Groningen Protocol is becoming quite the Euro-fad:
The Dutch debate is being closely watched throughout the continent. Belgium has laws similar to those in the Netherlands, and a bill permitting child euthanasia is before its Parliament. No date has been set for debate.We have a People's Republic of Belgium sighting...WMD regulars know what that means...that's right, Peter van P., I'm calling you out on this one. Are you for this?
Great Britain is considering legalizing assisted suicide for the terminally ill, amid reports that doctors already may be helping thousands of patients to die each year.
Something to consider is the fact that the parents of these kids don't have the decisive power. They are merely consulted. And we're not talking about just babies here either:
Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12.Emphasis added.
Who should be able to make that kind of a decision? Scott Johnson (The Big Trunk) from PowerLine has some insight on who shouldn't:
Our moral superiors in the Netherlands have formulated the Groningen Protocol licensing the termination of those whom their Nazi forebears might have referred to as young defectives.I'm not usually one for Nazi analogies, but in this case it bears mention.
Hugh is absolutely correct when, in his Weekly Standard article on the subject, says:
This is either a low point, or a point of no return. The establishment of "independent committees" to dispatch non-consenting humans is nothing but a death penalty committee for innocents. Once begun, it is impossible--simply impossible--to limit the concept with any bright line. Abortion, of course, has always been limited by the physical act of birth, and once out of the womb, only the most extreme "reproductive rights" advocates have argued that the baby's natural right to live can be compromised by the mother. But now the Netherlands has gone farther--much, much farther. If the "severely retarded" may be killed upon appropriate motion, second, debate, and majority vote, why not the moderately retarded? Why not the mildly retarded? Why not, in fact, anyone the "independent committee" deems as usefully dispatched.It has to start somewhere, doesn't it? Where does it end?
3:00PM Update
NRO's Peter Robinson asks a really good set of questions over on the Corner:Regarding the Groningen Protocol, the set of rules promulgated by a hospital in the Netherlands, under which, the hospital readily admits, physicans have already begun to euthranize sick infants, a question: Has any Roman Catholic bishop in the Netherlands addressed the issue? For that matter, has any religious leader of any stripe? Protestant, Jewish, Muslim?Peter van P.? You seem rather close to this subject...I'll do some Google research and see if I can find anything. [3:15PM - Mini-Update] Here is the diocese's website. It looks like it might actually be in blog form, but I can't read Dutch, so I'm not real sure what I'm looking at beyond the obvious...
3:30PM Update
I did find this in Catholic Culture:The Church's position on the subject of euthanasia is well known, constantly reasserted and confirmed with the intention to uphold the dignity and life of every human being:One thing I did get from the above article was a clarification to a point of contention that I had with Peter van P., namely that the Groningen Protocol is apparently NOT the same thing as the law which required parental consent.
"It is necessary to state firmly once more that nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Furthermore, no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action. For it amounts to the violation of the divine law, an offence against the dignity of the human person, a crime against life and an attack on humanity" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Iura et Bona, Chap. II).
John Paul II's Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which reaffirms the moral condemnation of euthanasia as "a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person" (n. 65), insists on suggesting a quite different way, "the way of love and true mercy, which our common humanity calls for and upon which faith in Christ the Redeemer, who died and rose again, sheds ever new light".
"The request which rises from the human heart in the supreme confrontation with suffering and death, especially when faced with the temptation to give up in utter desperation, is above all a request for companionship, sympathy and support in the time of trial" (n. 67). The Church, with her teaching, her activities and her own structures, constantly takes this view.
Europe, which is presenting itself to the world as a unity of peoples in solidarity in the name of "human rights", and which can still today preserve a plurimillennial patrimony of humanist civilization marked by respect for the human person and the practice of solidarity, must reject every cultural trend inspired by utilitarian cynicism or by the primacy of the economy over the human being, in order to continue to draft legislation that supports men and women and their dignity in a supportive society.
Bishop Elio Sgreccia
Vice-President of the Pontifical Academy for Life
3:45PM Update
And then there is this interesting exchange between Catholic Online and Fr. Miranda:Q: From a civil and moral point of view, how can this decision of the Dutch magistracy be evaluated?The Spartan analogy is better than the Nazi analogy, in my book, because it doesn't carry the same "baggage" with it, yet still gets to the heart of the matter historically.
Father Miranda: They are behaving as they did in Sparta, killing children with selective criteria. The battles fought for centuries on the vindication of human rights seem annulled given these decisions.
We are witnessing the negation of Judeo-Christian thought. In the tradition of Western thought, a person has intrinsic value by the simple fact of being a human being.
The Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 2 that rights apply to all without any distinction of any kind; in this instance, however, the human being has "value" according to his physical and psychic conditions.
The moment it is thought that, given his conditions he has "no value," then he is eliminated; in sum, anyone can decide to kill him.
Mark's Remarks
It took them 6 decades, but I guess some of old Europe is coming around to the idea of eugenics, of the Nazi idea of killing off the supposed weak. Under this system of supposed 'mercy,' we would have lost Stephen Hawking a long time ago....This is barbaric, cruel, and beyond inhumane. It spits in the face of life....
Why doesn't the UN condemn this? Did the Netherlands buy them off the same way Saddam did? Or is the UN simply, ultimately, a joke? Or both?
