New York Times article promotes infanticide - killing (euthanasia) newborns with disabilities

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In 2004, the Groningen Protocol was approved in the Netherlands which permitted the killing, by lethal injection of newborns with disabilities. In 2014 a Canadian bioethicist wrote an article titled: Physicians can justifiably euthanize certain severely impaired neonates. 

This week the New York Times has published an article by philospher Gary Comstock promoting infanticide of newborns with disabilities.

Comstock tells the story of Sam, his son with Trisomy 18, a condition that is claimed by many to be "incompatible with life."

Read: Trisomy 18 is not a dead sentence  - The story of Lilliana Dennis.

The story of Sam's brief life, his birth, his treatment and his death is moving and compelling.
 
The narrative explains the decision to withdraw the baby's ventilator. The child did not die a beautiful death. Comstock writes about the baby waking and grasping silently for breath. After the child dies Comstock writes:

You should not have let your baby die. You should have killed him.

This thought occurs to you years later, thinking about the gruesome struggle of his last 20 minutes. You are not sure whether it makes sense to talk about his life, because he never seemed to have the things that make a life: thoughts, wants, desires, interests, memories, a future. But supposing that he had thoughts, his strongest thought during those last minutes certainly appeared to be: “This hurts. Can’t someone help it stop?” He didn’t know your name, but if he had, he would have said: “Daddy? Please. Now.”

It seems the medical community has few options to offer parents of newborns likely to die. We can leave our babies on respirators and hope for the best. Or remove the hose and watch the child die a tortured death. Shouldn’t we have another choice? Shouldn’t we be allowed the swift humane option afforded the owners of dogs, a lethal dose of a painkiller?

For years you repress the thought. Then, early one morning, remembering again those last minutes, you realize that the repugnant has become reasonable. The unthinkable has become the right, the good. Painlessly. Quickly. With the assistance of a trained physician.

You should have killed your baby.

There are so many loving parents who cared for their child and hoped for the best and others who held and loved their child until the child died naturally. This story tells them that they should have killed their child.

Comstock boldly states that it is better to kill a baby with disabilities and then lies by stating that there are only two options, kill the baby or let the baby die a tortured death. 

What about having hope? What about proper pain and symptom management to allow a peaceful natural death?

 This article is designed to redefine love, from that of caring parents who live through the death of their child to that of parents and doctors who kill newborns with disabilities.