Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies


By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Raising the stakes in an excruciating ethical
debate, 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 in a handful of cases and reporting them to the
government.



The announcement last month 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 to the request, a spokesman
said, and it may come as soon as December.


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 spina bifida and
epidermosis bullosa, a blistering illness.


The hospital said it carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and
reported all cases to government prosecutors - but there have been no legal
proceedings taken against them.


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

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Lost their moral compass indeed! Meanwhile, Democrats are working fervently
to turn the US into the Netherlands. They'll never get it...and that's why
their party will continue to fade away into oblivion. It's better that the
American people are the ones to remove the Democratic party's stain of
immorality from our country's moral fiber rather than waiting until things
get so bad that God decides to do it for us. He has a history of being less
that descriminate in his methods, and I'd hate for the decent people to pay
for the sins of the immoral minority.