Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies

[Jolie Rouge]

By TOBY STERLING

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A hospital in the Netherlands - the first nation to permit euthanasia - recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.

The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives - a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.

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 Health Ministry is preparing its response, which could come as soon as December, a spokesman said.


Three years ago, the Dutch parliament made it legal for doctors to inject a sedative and a lethal dose of muscle relaxant at the request of adult patients suffering great pain with no hope of relief.


The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.


The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.


Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life, such as severe cases of spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a rare blistering illness.


The hospital revealed last month it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors. There have been no legal proceedings against the hospital or the doctors.


Roman Catholic organizations and the Vatican have reacted with outrage to the announcement, and U.S. euthanasia opponents contend the proposal shows the Dutch have lost their moral compass.


``The slippery slope in the Netherlands has descended already into a vertical cliff,'' said Wesley J. Smith, a prominent California-based critic, in an e-mail to The Associated Press.


Child euthanasia remains illegal everywhere. Experts say doctors outside Holland do not report cases for fear of prosecution.


``As things are, people are doing this secretly and that's wrong,'' said Eduard Verhagen, head of Groningen's children's clinic. ``In the Netherlands we want to expose everything, to let everything be subjected to vetting.''


According to the Justice Ministry, four cases of child euthanasia were reported to prosecutors in 2003. Two were reported in 2002, seven in 2001 and five in 2000. All the cases in 2003 were reported by Groningen, but some of the cases in other years were from other hospitals.


Groningen estimated the protocol would be applicable in about 10 cases per year in the Netherlands, a country of 16 million people.


Since the introduction of the Dutch law, Belgium has also legalized euthanasia, while in France, legislation to allow doctor-assisted suicide is currently under debate. In the United States, the state of Oregon is alone in allowing physician-assisted suicide, but this is under constant legal challenge.


However, experts acknowledge that doctors euthanize routinely in the United States and elsewhere, but that the practice is hidden.


``Measures that might marginally extend a child's life by minutes or hours or days or weeks are stopped. This happens routinely, namely, every day,'' said Lance Stell, professor of medical ethics at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., and staff ethicist at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. ``Everybody knows that it happens, but there's a lot of hypocrisy. Instead, people talk about things they're not going to do.''


More than half of all deaths occur under medical supervision, so it's really about management and method of death, Stell said.



11/30/04 17:54

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20041130%2F1754217753.htm&sc=1103&photoid=20010410NY190

[justme23]

Well... I'm sure it'll be the UNPOPULAR opinion here... but I feel if the child is terminal and the PARENTS have ok'd it... then it's not my right to judge.

[Njean31]

while working with hospice patients now for the last several months, i can understand why some patients/ families would choose this route if given the option. i've seen these patients suffer immensly, i really didn't know suffering before this job. one of my patients a few weekends ago, well........i went to see her on a saturday and she is lying in bed with many family and friends around, she is struggling for every breath and they are bickering back and forth over her bedside about feed her this, don't give her that, and so on and so forth......and i commence to doing my job, that is taking her vital signs and checking her from head to toe for everything from bedsores to bowel obstruction. well, at one point i have to move her on her side to get a look at her bottom at a bedsore and this is very painful for her....meanwhile all of these family members are getting on her nerves too. well anyways, the next day i go back because death is immenent for her and when i enter her room, i could tell right away that she had seriously declined overnight. she see's me and says, "oh God, not you again" but it was mumbled and slurred but i clearly understood what she meant (she said this due to having to be moved around and messed with and it was painful for her) although i didn't move her this time.......i just gently took her vital signs and listened to her heart and abdomen and looked at what i could see over the covers. anyway the main point i'm trying to get at is what she said after "oh, god, not you again" , next she said, "you mean i'm not dead yet, pleeeeease let me die" and tears rolled down her cheek. i got on the phone with her doctor and ordered her some morphine........she carried on 2 more days.....then died. this scenario has played out several times in my few short months there. some people in that much pain, wearing diapers, not eating/drinking, KNOWING there is NO HOPE, bedsore abounding, struggling for every breath, I am seriously reconsidering my own views on this subject. the ONLY problem i personally would have with it would be the "playing God" and the religious stance on taking a life. but if there is absolutely no quality of life, nothing but pain/despair? its a tough thing.

[Jolie Rouge]

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.

This is the part I have a problem with ...

It is a slippery slope when you start letting people deceide who has suffient "quality of life" to be allowed to live.

If a person is able to request "mercy" that is one thing, for others not even family is another.

[Njean31]

This is the part I have a problem with ...

It is a slippery slope when you start letting people deceide who has suffient "quality of life" to be allowed to live.

If a person is able to request "mercy" that is one thing, for others not even family is another.

i wouldn't agree with euthansia of mentally ill people, kind of reminds me of how Hitler started his extermination plan.....that is plain wrong. they are not in constant physical pain with no hope for recovery. i would think that the only time it should ever be considered ( and that would be if I ever could get over the religous issue) is if there is constant physical pain without hope of recovery, not people who are an inconvience to take care of like those who are severally mentally ill or elderly folks.

[ladybugbhb]

i wouldn't agree with euthansia of mentally ill people, kind of reminds me of how Hitler started his extermination plan.....that is plain wrong. they are not in constant physical pain with no hope for recovery. i would think that the only time it should ever be considered ( and that would be if I ever could get over the religous issue) is if there is constant physical pain without hope of recovery, not people who are an inconvience to take care of like those who are severally mentally ill or elderly folks.


ita! this is awful. it is just one step forward to "pick and choose"

[ckerr4]

But I certainly don't think that's the point that sentence was making. The Dutch are working on this protocol for people who have no free will and who are terminally ill; the article mentioned severely mentally retarded peope because many of those people would not be able to express their will in a case where they were also terminally ill and in great pain. It isn't an either/or scenario, but a both case - they would have to meet both of the criteria, be both terminally il and in a coma, terminally ill and severely mentally retarded, terminally ill and an infant, etc. I still understand if someone is against euthenasia, but I did want to clarify that.




...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.

[Jolie Rouge]

This article clarifies a few questions that I had ....


Dutch ponder 'mercy killing' rules
Wednesday, December 1, 2004 Posted: 7:23 PM EST (0023 GMT)

(CNN) -- Dutch health officials are considering guidelines doctors could follow for euthanizing terminally ill people "with no free will," including children, the severely mentally retarded and patients in irreversible comas.

Netherlands was the first country to legalize euthanasia -- ending the life of someone suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition, with their approval.

In recent years there also have been reports of mercy killings of terminally ill babies, and officials at one hospital say a number have been carried out there.

The Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has asked the Netherlands Ministry of Health to create an independent board to evaluate euthanasia cases for each category of people "with no free will."

Doctors now follow legal standards regarding euthanasia, or assisted suicide, for patients who are able to make such a decision on their own.

Under the rules established by KNMG and the Dutch courts, the patient's decision must be freely made, well-considered and persistent; there must be unbearable suffering; and the attending physician should consult with a colleague.

There are no official guidelines for ending the lives of those who are unable to make their own decision, such as in the case of a baby, but Groningen Academic Hospital has conducted such procedures under its own, internal guidelines.

Dr. Eduard Verhagen, clinical director of the hospital's pediatric clinic, told NPR in an interview that the babies who had been euthanized were born with incurable conditions that were so serious "(we) felt that the most humane course would be to allow the child to die and even actively assist them with their death."

"They are very rare cases of extreme suffering. In these cases, the diagnosis was extreme spina bifada."

That disorder is marked by incomplete development of the brain, spinal cord and/or their protective coverings.

Because the procedure was not legal, Verhagen said, the hospital preferred that cases be assessed by a committee of experts. The Dutch parliament legalized euthanasia for adults in 2002.

"What we would like to happen here in Holland is that we put the spotlight on these decisions because they need to be extremely secure, and instead of taking these positions in a kind of gray area, we want them to be in the spotlight," the doctor said.

Eric Van Yijlick, project manager for SCEN (Support and Consultation on Euthanasia in the Netherlands), said the Groningen cases involving newborns should be referred to as "life ending without request" rather than euthanasia, because that term indicates the dying party has requested the procedure.

Van Yijlick said that to his knowledge, the killing of newborns is not common -- just a few cases yearly. No official statistics exist on terminally ill children's lives being terminated, he said.

New York Medical Producer Chris Gajilan contributed to this report.


www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/12/01/netherlands.mercykill/index.html


----------------------


I will give this much -- the way they 'euthanise" is certainly more humane that what happens here in the US. One of the objections I have in that FL woman's case is that they will simply cut off all food and water and allow her to starve to death. If you did that to a sick dog you would be put in jail for cruelty to an animal ! At least the Dutch will give them an overdose of a sedative to ease them from life.

[Jolie Rouge]

Dutch told of child euthanasia

The report authors want to encourage reporting of child euthanasia cases
Dutch doctors have reported 22 mercy killings of terminally ill babies since 1997, according to a new study. None of the doctors involved were charged, although euthanasia for children is illegal in the Netherlands. The report, in the Dutch Journal of Medicine, is the first detailed examination of child euthanasia.

The study's authors want to address under-reporting of the practice and encourage doctors to report cases without fear of prosecution. The cases involved babies with extreme spina bifida, a disabling birth defect.

The study showed that prosecutors had decided not to file charges as long as four unofficial rules were met:

the child's medical team and independent doctors must agree
there is no prospect of improvement and the pain cannot be eased
parents give their consent
the life must be ended in the correct medical way

A survey has suggested Dutch doctors end the lives of about 15 to 20 disabled newborns a year but most go unreported. "The babies are there but we were never allowed to talk about them," said paediatrician Eduard Verhagen, of Groningen University Medical Centre, and one of the authors of the study. "That must change. If we take this awfully difficult decision, it must happen with complete openness," he told De Volkskrant newspaper. "You are trained to save the life of a child but with these children the suffering can only be stopped by ending their lives. It takes courage to do that."

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to legalise euthanasia but doctors must follow strict rules. The Vatican has criticised the Netherlands over its legalisation of euthanasia.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4198993.stm

[janelle]

This is the slippery slope to killing my mother. She has dementia and does nothing everyday except sit in a chair and listen to TV. She has no pain.

Some would say it's her time to die. Over my dead body!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can still relate to her, I can still talk to her, I can still love her, I can still be her daughter. No one is going to take that away from her family and I will see to it that whoever does sufferes the consequenses.

It's up to God when her time comes, no one elses. Just because someone seems to us not to be here for a purpose does not make it so. It's the healthy they are here for. To teach us what we need to learn about love and caring.

Funny, I just got a call this minute from the carehome. The doctor ordered an antibiotic for my mother since she seems to be coming down with an upper respirtory infection. No one saying---"oh she seems to be getting sick, she isn't worth much anymore so do not waste any meds on her". That would be the sick thinking. Just who is worthy of being here and who is the usless one? The heartless ones are the useless ones IMO. They scare me but I will still leave it up to God to decide on them as well.

[Alessandra]

This is the slippery slope to killing my mother. She has dementia and does nothing everyday except sit in a chair and listen to TV. She has no pain.

The slope isn't slippery unless you choose to step onto it.

Your mother may have no physical pain but I'm sure she never wanted to end up the way she has. Even so, I don't think that euthanasia would be appropriate for anyone who is not suffering great physical pain.


Some would say it's her time to die. Over my dead body!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can still relate to her, I can still talk to her, I can still love her, I can still be her daughter. No one is going to take that away from her family and I will see to it that whoever does sufferes the consequenses.


So you're saying you want her to stay around so that YOU can interact with her ? What about her wishes ? Someday she will slip away from you. Letting her go without prolonging her suffering will be the greatest gift you can give.

I'm not judging you nor am I condoning euthanasia in anything but the most extreme of circumstances. Hopefully my thoughts will give rise to more thought and discussion on this most uncomfortable subject.

[janelle]

I believe she interacts in her own way. She has signed a do not resusitate order and has told us she does not want to be kept alive with extraordinary means. No tubes breathing for her or anything like that. I feel more comfortable putting her into a carehome since I was not sure how I would deal with finding her not breathing. I told hospice I would probably tear up the paper and the medics have to resusitate without a paper. I did not want to have them bring her back just to have the family decide to have the machine turned off if she were brain dead.

I do not believe people with dementia are brain dead. She is not the same mother she was ten years ago but she is still my mother and I will love her and do what I and the family think is right until she dies.

Of course it would be better if she died peacefully in her sleep but that is for
God to decide. Until that time I will do as much for her as I can to make her life as full as it can be for where she is. She knows she is loved and I believe people also have a certain control over when they want to die. That may be the only control she has now and I will let her have it. No euthanasia needed here. It gets to be the slippery slope when that means of dying becomes the norm.

[Jolie Rouge]

Study: Newborn euthanasia underreported
Wednesday, March 9, 2005


TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) -- Euthanizing terminally ill newborns, while still very rare, is more common in the Netherlands than was believed when the startling practice was reported a few months ago -- and experts say it also occurs, quietly, in other countries.

Dutch doctors estimate that at least five newborn mercy killings occur for every one reported in that country, which has allowed euthanasia for competent adults since 1985.

In 2002, doctors at University Medical Center Groningen helped create the so-called Groningen protocol, a list of standards for performing and reporting euthanasia of newborns with serious, incurable deformities. The aim was to encourage more reporting and discussion.

Two pediatricians at the hospital, Drs. Pieter J.J. Sauer and Eduard Verhagen, report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine that 22 mercy killings of newborns who otherwise would have lingered in intensive care for years were reported to authorities from 1997 to 2004, about three each year. But national surveys of Dutch doctors have found 15 to 20 such cases a year, out of about 200,000 births.

Verhagen, who supports such euthanasia, said in an interview the doctors were allowed to review district attorneys' records on the 22 reported cases. None was prosecuted.

"These were all very clear and very extreme cases," he said, where the newborns were suffering from severe, untreatable spina bifida, with major brain and spinal cord deformities and sometimes other birth defects. "Do we have them continue life in suffering or do we end the life and end the suffering?"

Euthanasia opponents and others have been highly critical of that viewpoint.

"During the past few months, the international press has been full of blood-chilling accounts and misunderstandings concerning this protocol," the doctors wrote in the journal.

The Groningen protocol requires being sure that the newborn is suffering greatly with no hope of improvement, that the prognosis is certain and confirmed by at least one independent doctor, and that both parents give informed consent.

Details of the newborn's condition and the euthanasia procedure, usually an infusion of lethal drugs, must be reported to local district attorneys under the protocol, so they can assess each case without interrogating physicians.

"We believe that all cases must be reported if the country is to prevent uncontrolled and unjustified euthanasia," the doctors wrote.

Dutch medical groups since 1997 have asked the government to set up a panel of medical, legal and ethical experts to which doctors would be more comfortable reporting cases. The Dutch government has promised to create the panel but repeatedly has delayed doing so, Verhagen said.

"Every country has to find a way how they want to deal with this difficult dilemma," he said. "Do they want the doctors to be silent?"

Other research, he said, shows that is often the case in other countries.

In France, 73 percent of doctors in one study reported using drugs to end a newborn's life, but those cases aren't reported to authorities. Meanwhile, 43 percent of Dutch doctors surveyed and between 2 percent and 4 percent of doctors in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Germany and Sweden reported doing so.

In the United States, some doctors and ethicists -- both supporters and opponents of euthanasia -- say newborn euthanasia has happened occasionally for decades, although it is much more common, and accepted, to withhold or stop intensive treatment and let the baby die. Experts said the new Dutch report will generate discussion but won't change American public opinion or practices.

Princeton University bioethics professor Peter Singer, who believes euthanasia is acceptable when a baby's suffering cannot be relieved, said U.S. neonatologists tell him it does happen occasionally.

"This is never reported or publicly discussed, for fear of prosecution," he wrote in an e-mail interview from Australia, where he is on leave. "In the present political climate, it is difficult to see doctors being more open about these issues."

Carrie Gordon Earll, bioethics policy analyst at Focus on the Family, said she thinks the U.S. medical community strongly opposes newborn euthanasia but that some cases have occurred.

"If they're done under cover and secret ... they should be prosecuted," she said. "This is not the Netherlands and we should not be on a slippery slope to baby infanticide."

Rita Marker, executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, which opposes both, said newborn euthanasia happens "under the radar" in the United States, but there's no way to quantify it.

"If we transferred the Netherlands experience to the United States, we would see even more abuses" of patients' rights because of the health system's emphasis on cost control, Marker said.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/03/09/euthanasia.study.ap/index.html

[YankeeMary]

They are talking about people in pain, or terminally ill with so much pain, diseases with no cures, not about older people that are just old.
As for the newborns that is a tough one. They were born that way for a reason, and one day God willing we will know why. I know that there are parents out there that would have children that are severly mentally handicapped that can't or won't bring a baby like "that" home with them and so few to adopt those, and it would be cruel to just leave them lay in a hospital, unloved and uncared for, so maybe mercy killing for those little angels would be the best thing for them?!? What a tough position to be in for the doctors of those babies. God Bless them.

[Jolie Rouge]

Anyone care to revisit this in light of proposed "Universal Health Care" ?

[Jolie Rouge]

The Case for Discriminating Between Pre- and Post-Birthortions”
March 4, 2012 by Dafydd ab Hugh

Some days ago, my Favorite Blogger posted The Case for Infanticide, as enunciated by a group of Oxfordian medical “ethicists.” No, really: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/the-case-for-infanticide.php


Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.


Perhaps that’s the reason many on the Left attacked Sarah Palin for giving birth to her son Trig: Progressivist “ethicists” must have wondered why she didn’t just procure an “after-birth abortion.”
The idea that we should allow post-natal killing of babies is, of course, both monstrous and insane; it’s so bizarre that only a card-carrying “ethicist” could hawk it. John Hinderaker naturally rejects such an atavistic, I would say satanic ethic, which flies in the face of thousands of years of Western thought. He’s not one to accept a lunatic assertion just because it’s asserted by a guy who publishes in the Journal of Medical Ethics!

Alas, he then immediately accepts the lunatic assertion next door — because it’s asserted by a guy who publishes in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
Hinderaker buys the same ethicists’ corrolary proposition:


They preferred to use the phrase “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killedmparable with that of a fetus.”phasis added -- DaH]


Logically, then, Hinderaker (and nearly all right-to-lifers) would have to agree with the following syllogism:

1.Since said ethicists admit that the moral status of a foetus is the same as that of a newborn;

2.And since all decent and moral Westerners believe that the moral status of a newborn is the same as that of an adult (i.e., that killing a newborn is morally the same as killing an adult);

3.Thus the moral status of a foetus is the same as that of an adult;

4.And therefore, medical ethicists have “proven” that abortion is murder. Quod Erat Demonstrandum!

And thereby hangs the tail.

In the pro-lifers’ effort to prove that abortion is akin to actual murder, as well as in the ethicists’ effort to prove that murder is akin to mere abortion, both sides begin from the very same premise: That there is no moral distinction between a zygote, an embryo, a foetus, and a newborn baby. That is, they accept Premise 1 in the syllogism above.

Contrariwise, I demonstrate the philosophical vacuity of that claim by noting that it goes to prove both that killing a newborn is murder, and also that killing a newborn is not murder.

In general, a premise the leads to a logical contradiction suggests that the premise itself is faulty; that’s the generic structure of what’s called Reductio ad Absurdum: To prove proposition X, you assume its opposite (which can be written ~X) then demonstrate that ~X leads to a contradiction, that is, both conclusions A and ~A at the same time.

This isn’t exactly that situation; for one, there is more than one flaw in both syllogisms. Also, it’s certainly possible that one side is right and the other simply wrong, which eliminates the contradiction. Still, it’s a good bet that Premise (1) is just wrong. As further evidence, most pro-lifers reject it viscerally, even while championing it rhetorically. “Do as we say, not as we do!”

For instance, if (1) above were true, then pro-lifers would treat every early-term miscarriage as a death, and they would hold a funeral for the fertilized egg and mourn for months. Which obviously the vast majority do not. There is certainly sadness; but it’s more the sadness of lost opportunity, what might have been, than the kind of long-term grief that accompanies the utterly tragic death of a newborn baby. To be utterly blunt and Spockian about it, I cannot imagine even Sen. Santorum showing his kids a heavy menstrual flow containing a miscarried fertilized egg. It’s just not the same thing.

And on the flip side, many, many pro-choicers who support abortion nevertheless utterly reject infanticide; and they don’t think of it as “after-birth abortion.” I would guess that more than 99% of Americans — and probably more than 95% of pro-life conservatives — do not de facto treat a miscarriage as they would the death of a newborn; even more telling, the same ultramajorities would not even treat abortion the same as they treat infanticide.

If a mother who engages a physician to murder her newborn, nearly everyone in America would demand that not only the doctor but the mother herself be sentenced to life in prison or even the death penalty. But how many demand life (or death) for women who obtain an abortion?

There is no way to spin it: Even right-to-lifers by and large treat early-term abortions very differently than they would treat infanticide or late-term abortions.

Except for a tiny, easily dismissed subgroup, we all discriminate between those two very different acts. Even those who condemn abortion do not call for the same punishment as they rightly demand for infanticides.

( continues .... )

[Jolie Rouge]

Right-to-lifers often argue, against their own actions, that there is no logical place for humanness to begin other than conception (and, as a hidden assumption, they generally equate humanness with moral personhood). But of course, there are many other points that folks can and historically have believed constitute the beginning of moral personhood, e.g.:

1.At conception (week two — remember that you begin counting from the last menstruation, typically two weeks before pregnancy).

2.When the fertilized egg implants itself to the uterine wall, indicating that it’s now a pregnancy (fourth week).

3.When it first begins to divide, indicating that it’s growing (shortly after implantation).

4.At the “Gummy Bear” stage, when it takes on the basic mammalian (quadruped) shape, as seen via ultrasound (sixth week).

5.When the foetus first begins to move, still only detectable via medical equipment (eighth week).

6.When a doctor can first detect a heartbeat (week 10 to 12).

7.At “quickening,” when the mother can first feel the foetus move (about halfway through gestation, week 20-21).

8.When the cerebral cortex becomes “human,” in the sense of developing the brain structures that will allow the eventual baby to use language and think in a human way, as opposed to merely a mammalian or even primate way (eighth month, roughly half-way through the third trimester).

9.At birth.

on beyond zebra…

10.When the baby draws its first breath (traditional Jewish teaching is that the soul enters the body at that point).

11.At the severing of the umbilical cord, indicating complete autonomy from the mother’s body.

12.After some months or years following the birth, when the liberal “ethicist” finally decides he likes the baby enough not to kill and eat it.

Any one of these points can logically be chosen as the beginning of moral personhood — the point at which the developing foetus or baby should be considered a person and be afforded the moral rights of all other persons. Most of them have, at one time or other in history, been chosen by some society, primitive or sophisticated; for an extreme example, a number of societies have considered children expendable until they reached a certain age.

In fact, I would say that societies are largely defined by who they consider to be “persons.” The more savage a society, the more it tends to restrict personhood to a smaller and smaller subset of the population; they exclude members of non-allied tribes, children under some set age, often women in general, those of insufficient status (especially slaves), those who violate the law, those with mental or physical deformities, those with afflictions or conditions, those thought to be witches or sorcerers, and so forth.

We Americans must choose at what stage of development personhood obtains, as must every society. But we must choose on the basis of a real consensus — based upon how folks act in real life, not some theoretical construct divorced from day to day life. And since real people in the real world do not treat, and never in our history have treated miscarriage the same as the death of a newborn, I think it prudent to find a consensus somewhere north of conception but south of birth.

This doesn’t require that everyone believe that the consensus point marks the place that Nature and Nature’s God give us our souls… the consensus point marks only the point at which our society confers legal personhood, pledging to protect, thenceforth, the rights and liberties of the new legal person.

Therefore, pace, John Hinderaker, but… a right-to-lifer can no more call it “proven” that abortion is as morally bad as infanticide — than can a heartless secularist call it “proven” that infanticide is no morally worse than abortion. Many rational and logical points in foetal development other than either conception or birth can demarcate potential persons, which as yet have no moral rights, from actual persons who certainly do.

I said “north of conception but south of birth”: When any pre-natal point other than conception is chosen, then necessarily, during some of the earliest weeks of gestation, the entity is not a legal person, and abortion is legally allowable. On the other hand, during the later weeks of gestation, the foetus becomes a child and is legally a person; after that point, not only would abortion only be allowed if required to save the mother’s life (not merely her “health”), but every effort must be made to save the child; removing a baby from the womb without attempting to save its life would constitute negligent homicide at the least.

As you can see, logically, we cannot even begin to proceed deciding what to do about abortion until we first establish a national consensus on where we shall define legal personhood to begin. This national consensus cannot be too close to either extreme (conception or birth), because a forced “consensus” is not a concensus at all but a diktat… and experience teaches that a law that is utterly rejected by a large portion of ordinary members of society is a prescription for disaster, perhaps even leading to national suicide. (Cf. same-sex marriage/polygamy in America.)

Alas, we have never grappled, as a society and in a meaningful way, with the definition of personhood; in particular, when it’s conferred and whether there are entities that are biologically human but will never be accorded personhood — an anencephalic baby, for example, or a human being so severely retarded that he or she has none of the most basic attributes we associate with persons.

Of course, nothing stops a society from choosing to confer “created rights” upon non-persons, pre-persons, former persons, or even animals, protecting both those who are expected to develop human-like consciousness, those who never had human-like consciousness, and those who had it at one time, but through disease or misadventure, no longer retain it; note laws protecting those in an irreversible coma, laws prohibiting cruelty to animals, and laws against desecrating the dead. But such laws are actually to preserve the sacred dignity of the persons who love such non-persons.

A state should thus be allowed to choose to protect the rights and liberty of pre-natal life even if it’s not yet legally a person. But all states should be mandated to protect the rights and liberties (including the right to life) of anyone already a person via the national consensus.

My personal choice for the national personhood consensus is Point 8, the humanization of the cerebellum; I believe in a soul, but I believe it can only live in a human, not animal brain; until the brain develops human-like functions, I cannot see that a soul would find a place to fit. But this is likely too far along in the pregnancy to be generally accepted.

Among those who don’t believe in ensoulment, I’m sure you would still find much disagreement about when the entity becomes a person, from conception to deciding the kid is cute enough to live (assuming that doesn’t disrupt the Progressivists’ lifestyle). But we seem to have settled upon a de-facto consensus as somewhere within the second trimester.

For a number of reasons, therefore, I nominate quickening (Point 7) as the logical national consensus for when our society confers legal personhood:

•It’s about halfway through the second trimester, hence halfway through the pregnancy; it’s a nice, round number, and we all tend to like round numbers.

•It’s easily detectable by routine doctor’s examination; hence, such an examination would be determinative for legal purposes.

•It marks the first time the expectant mother can actually feel that the thing inside her is a living being, moving of its own volition; she cannot deny that she has another life growing inside her.

•In Western history, It’s one of the points during gestation that has been frequently chosen by societies for the moment of ensoulment. (Notice none of these reasons depends upon the specious Roe v. Wade criterion of “viability,” which of course varies depending on the current state of medical technology.)

But whichever point we as a society finally choose, we need to get started on that conversation. Without it, the only principled action we can take regarding abortion, contraception, and reproductive rights is the Monkey Moot: screech hysterically and fling poo at each other.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2012/03/04/the-case-for-discriminating-betweenpre-and-post-birth-abortions/