Outrage as Church backs calls for severely disabled babies to be allowed to die

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=416003&in_page_id=1770

The Church of England has broken with tradition dogma by calling for doctors to be allowed to let sick newborn babies die.

Christians have long argued that life should preserved at all costs - but a bishop representing the national church has now sparked controversy by arguing that there are occasions when it is compassionate to leave a severely disabled child to die.

And the Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler, who is the vice chair of the Church of England's Mission and Public Affairs Council, has also argued that the high financial cost of keeping desperately ill babies alive should be a factor in life or death decisions.

The shock new policy from the church has caused outrage among the disabled.

A spokeswoman for the UK Disabled People's Council, which represents tens of thousands of members in 140 different organisations, said: "How can the Church of England say that Christian compassion includes killing of disabled babies either through the withdrawing or withholding of treatment or by active euthanasia?

[Rosemary2205]

1. There are worse things than death.

Most people with disabilities can lead productive fairly comfortable lives. However, I myself have met the parents of a child born in severe pain and a fatal deformity that required $4 Million in medical care just to keep her alive for 4 years of constant pain before she died. The parents went to court to allow them to let the child die rather than be in pain. Instead the court revoked their parental rights and gave a state guardian the right to keep ordering more and more surgeries at state expense. A damn waste all the way around.

In an age where medicine can force a human to stay alive, against the very laws of nature, we need a careful, thoughtful, rarely used euthanasia law with many built in safeguards. We just do.

[Disturbed]

2. Yes Rosemary2205 you are logical.

Unfortunately, this issue is more emotional than logical. "Killing babies" is the framing and thus charged with emotion..

[aquart]

6. How about "torturing babies"?

Does that framing work for you?

[REP]

9. Excellent Point - So Much Heroic Care Is For Everyone's Benefit But The Patient

It is done because the technology exists to do it; because the doctors have been trained to do it and the family has more hope than knowledge, but very often, these heroic measures do not benefit the patient and do no more than prolong suffering. Where the line should be drawn between palliative care, euthanasia and merely witholding heroic treatment is a question for medical ethicists, but to me the bottom line is very simple: if you wouldn't force a cat or dog to go through that, why on earth would you force another human being to do so?

[hlthe2b]

13. We encourage compassion & euthanasia for dying/suffering pets....

but humans must suffer... I truly don't know how some can bridge this paradox? :shrug:

[REP]

15. Some Think Suffering Is Noble; Others Think Animals Are Worthless

I disagree with both ideas. Extreme, unremitting suffering with no hope for healing or life that has meaning is not noble and I cannot understand how it would please a loving creator. Animals supposedly have no souls and therefore their suffering is meaningless, therefore, ending their suffering is not depriving them the chance to please their creator with their exquisite agony - or so that school of thought goes. To me, sometimes the only way to end pain and suffering is to end life and I know I have never personally made this decision lightly or easily. Yes, they are 'just' animals but so am I.

An adult has every right to refuse euthanasia and to demand that every thing be done to extend life, no matter how agonizing it be, even if these requests are done only to conform with a religious view. A neonate, however, has no religion of its own and should not be forced to, through the use of heroic means to extend its life to conform to the religion of others, especially if these means inflict suffering or prolongs suffering. To me, this is simply inhumane and cruel.

[hlthe2b]

16. I could not agree more...

[sandnsea]

12. We need family to make their own decisions

And courts to step in only when basic medical care is being denied. Anything else will most certainly be abused.

[sarge43]

3. Both church and state should butt out of this.

This is the medical decision of the physician, individual and, in the case of a child, family. If church and state aren't taking on all of the burden of care; then they don't have the authority to make the decision.

[Don_1967]

4. I agree

this is a private family decision no one Else's business.

[msongs]

5. Isnt this issue the reason for delayed baptism of babies?

in the day when so many babies died shortly after birth, baptism was delayed and the child not named in the church, for whatever reason

societies in the old days could not afford people who could not contribute, not out of being cruel, just not logistical.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[lisby]

17. Not right.

Baptizing child not likely to live was done by the midwives if no clergy were around. It was important to baptize as quickly as possible because unbaptized babies were believd to go to hell--or, at best, purgatory. Most babies were baptized on the day they were born or very shortly thereafter.

Lisby

[SoCalDem]

7. A pediatrician once told me

that until babies started being born in hospitals with "so many people" around, doctors (who made housecalls back then" would often "do nothing heroic" to save a baby with a severe deformity.

people were fairly isolated back then, and babies were just listed as 'stillborn'. the immediate family grieved the loss, and that's all there was to it.

modern hospitals and large delivery room staffs make decisions like that impossible.

[kestrel91316]

8. .....one more way the Amish (with their home births) probably

are using more common sense than us "English".........

Betcha THEY aren't keeping infants/toddlers with terminal birth defects languishing in hospitals for years wil no hope of a meaningful life........

[REP]

10. They Eschew Technology; They Couldn't If They Wanted To

Given the high rates of mental retardation within Amish communities, they do not 'lay over' 'weak' babies, but they refuse the technology that would keep, say, a severely premature neonate alive. It is surely a matter of technology, not ideology, at play.

[sandnsea]

11. Just like in Texas

Some pro-life groups helped write the futile care law there too. It's incredible to me that religion is siding with the free marketers on health care and life and death.

[Marrah_G]

14. one more reason for abortion rights

The main reason I am strongly pro-choice comes from an experience a decade ago.

I had a member of my then husbands family who I was very close to. I remember the happy day her little boy was born. I also remember the morning just after dawn when I answered the door and she was standing there. She looked as though her heart had been ripped out of her chest. That precious, wanted, loved little boy had something called Tay Sachs. It is a genetic disease usually hitting Jewish families. Niether she nor her husband had jewish ancestors.

This little boy regressed slowly over the next 4 years. He lived a life of feeding tubes, severe pain, blindness, deafness and horrible siezures. It's gutwrenching to pray for the death of a child you love. There is no cure, no treatment. I remember the night he died. I remember driving to her house that night, the snow was falling and it was so peaceful it seemed as if time stood still. I could probably go into more detail but just the memories alone still cut like a knife. I believe given the choice they would have let him go to end his suffering long before.

A couple years later they tried to have another child. The tests came back positive for the disease. She did not have the baby. I believe it was probably the hardest thing she ever did, both as a woman and as a Catholic. But it was the right thing to do.

Now people want to take that choice away from people. To people to bring a child into the world only to die a horrible, agonizing,slow death. People that are rabidly pro-life are the ones who never see the rare cases. They see only their own ideology and a "selfish woman".

If they could walk a mile in one of these family's shoes.

[benEzra]

18. The actual story seems a bit more nuanced...

and speaks of letting a child die as something of a last resort, and it's the FAMILY's decision--not just the doctor/insurance provider/NHS saying "Oh, a really sick kid, let's let them die to save NHS some money."

BUT, just to keep things in perspective, here's one of those "desperately ill babies" six or seven years later:



That's after two open-heart surgeries (first one at age 10 days, second just before his 4th birthday), seven angioplasties, a Ladd procedure, and too much other stuff to keep track of. A happy kid with a pretty good prognosis for living a reasonably normal life.

I understand letting children die who just don't have a chance, but a "just let 'em die 'cause they're expensive" approach would really really bother me. Because the kid in the photo above is my son. Yeah, it's been a struggle; he has immunological and speech/motor issues along with the cardiac stuff, and he can't eat solid food--long story--and we're perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy due to medical expenses (can't get medicaid because we make enough to pay taxes, you know the drill).

Yes, recovering from heart surgery isn't easy, we almost lost him both times, and he even went through full-blown, cold-turkey morphine withdrawal after his second surgery (couldn't do methadone due to interaction issues, so he had the shakes and everything for days), and geez, that was hard. Yes, heart surgery really, really sucks. But dying and missing out on life sucks more--otherwise, why would anybody ever choose to have heart surgery? And he wants to LIVE. He's got his whole life ahead of him, and believe me, he enjoys every minute of it.

I understanding the need for a debate on the truly hopeless cases, but if a doctor, a hospital, an insurance company, or a government agency, said to let a kid like this die because we'd rather spend money on other projects--that'd be pretty damn heartless, IMHO.

:rant: