The lines that say it all
Here they are:
Charlotte has confounded medical opinion and is now three years old. However, she is severely disabled and needs constant medical care.
England's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecology has just come out with a proposal to begin discussing when "deliberate intervention to cause the death of an infant" should be legalized. The reasoning behind the doctors' effort, apparently, is that there's more at stake than just the child's disability -- there's the family's burden, economic concerns and all that. Problems not just for the kid but for society as a whole. And, they seem to be saying, if society is coming to accept things like assisted suicide and "hastening death for mortally sick adults and the dying elderly," then doesn't it just make sense?
This has certainly been Peter Singer's reasoning.
The Royal College's proposal has been kicking around in the British news all weekend; the lines I refer to come from the "This is London" website -- We must debate mercy killing of disabled babies, say top doctors -- and can be found in this section:
Any law allowing newborn babies to be killed would cover cases like that of Charlotte Wyatt, who was born three months prematurely, weighing just one pound and with severe brain and lung damage.Doctors wanted to switch off her life support machine but her parents - who have now separated - fought to keep her alive.
Charlotte has confounded medical opinion and is now three years old. However, she is severely disabled and needs constant medical care.
"Confounded medical opinion." Yeah, medical opinion is often "confounded." In every sense of the term.
How many disabled people do you know -- maybe you yourself, eh? -- who tell stories today of having escaped the predictions of the medical establishment? "The doctor told my parents I'd be a vegetable," says a doctoral candidate. "My family was told by doctors I'd be dead before I was four," says the head of a state agency.
You know the stories. We've all heard them; many of you may have your own personal versions.
But the stories don't seem to sink in to people like the members of the Royal College. Or maybe they do sink in, but they are somehow off the point.
Maybe the real truth is simply that lots of people don't care whether there's a possibility the disabled infant will go on to be a musician or a philosopher or a teacher. Maybe they just focus on how much that infant is going to cost everybody.
Because -- you know? -- if the lines like those actually convinced folks, it seems that Peter Singer wouldn't command such a . . . what? A following? A respect? An esteem??
What this is really about is recovery. Paul Longmore's "cure 'em or kill 'em" explanation is certainly accurate.
I could rant on and on but I think I'll stop and let you folks take up the rant.
The story in the London paper has a cute photo of Baby Charlotte. And it's got a nice section for comments. You might want to visit:
We must debate mercy killing of disabled babies, say top doctors
November 06, 2006 | Email this story
Comments (newest comments at bottom)
The underlying mindset of the "mainstream" is that life is a zero-sum game based on a scarcity of resources.
It's likely that in certain isolated cases there is a shortage of some sort: there can only be one Miss America at a time but in the sense it is perceived in our la-la-land it has not been true since at the latest 1970.
In fact there's way more than "enough" to go around. The insistence on using exclusivity as the reward for "success" continues to bog us down. If we want to prevent the tragic impact on families and caretakers we should find a way to test for which infant will become Bundy or Dahmer and kill/eat those rather than figuring who will talk/look different and abort them.
Love.
Posted by: William Loughborough on November 9, 2006 10:22 AM