Selling Infanticide (Again)

The essence of euthanasia consciousness has never been about “choice,” but about deciding that certain lives are not worth living. And, it leads inevitably to justifying infanticide since killing to end suffering has been redefined from bad to good. If that is your basic view, then in the end, what does “choice” have to do with it?

A lot of us have warned that assisted suicide puts us on the road that leads to eugenic infanticide, which has been practiced for at least 15 years rather openly in the Netherlands. Such arguments used to be dismissed as alarmist and paranoid. Now that the Netherlands is on the fast track to formally legalizing infanticide and our worries can no longer be derided as mere paranoia, we see a new approach: Infanticide itself is being sold as a right and proper policy.

Articles that promote infanticide as compassionate and proper have appeared here in the USA in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times. This is the latest example of news stories as infanticide propaganda in the London Times, where, not coincidentally, a big fight is brewing to legalize assisted suicide. (I will be traveling to the UK next week to speak to and rally the anti-euthanasia forces.)

Note that the article doesn’t even bother to see what could have been done to alleviate the suffering of infants given as examples of proper infanticides. Opponents of infanticide are not given a chance to seriously rebut assertions or perhaps, to show examples of Dutch infanticides that were clearly based on bias against the disabled. Note also that the number of infanticides each year was misstated to be 15, which is actually the published figure for one hospital. According to the Lancet, the annual number is closer to 100, about 8% of all infants who die each year in the Netherlands.

The unattributed quote from American “conservatives” taken from the Weekly Standard in opposition to infant euthanasia, comparing it to the Nazis is mine—and unsurprisingly, it does not come close to fairly representing my argument against infanticide in general, or describe the points I was making in that article in particular. Also note that there is only one quote given from a Dutch opponent and it is merely a general condemnation.

Make no mistake: Infanticide is part of the euthanasia agenda. Toward this end, much effort is being made internationally to normalize the killing of very sick, dying, and disabled babies. Should that succeed, the categories of killable babies would expand just as Dutch adult euthanasia has spread to the point that even depressed people can be assisted in suicide.

As I have indeed written, if this effort succeeds, we will owe the German doctors hanged at Nuremberg for murdering disabled babies an apology. But that is just one small point made in a far larger argument against infanticide. Too bad the media reporters who seem so star struck by the killing agenda almost never bother to really explore the other side.