Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies, Am I The Only One Uncomfortable With This?

My discomfort is, at first reading of the article, 2 fold.

1. The children were terminal. Why isn't nature allowed to take it's course? This "natural course" could take years, but is the procedure being done for the hospital's convience (bed space) and financial burden as much as relieving pain and suffering for the patients?

2. Four children were Euthanized prior to regulations being put into place.


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20041130/D86MEAA80.html


What am I missing on this story?

 

Why does this make make think of bird_migration?

 

I can understand the discomfort with this, but I don't think that it's being done to save hospital space or for financial reasons - the article says that this procedure is only done when the infant has severe pain that cannot be relieved. I'm not saying I completely agree with this - I am particularly concerned about the fact that the infant is obviously not able to speak for him/herself and cannot agree to have their life ended (as with adult patients). I also read another article about this issue which said that parents did not have the final say on whether to euthanize an infant, which is more disturbing to me than the rest of this.

 

I encourage you all to read Whatever Happened to the Human Race? by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop. It was written back in 1979, before Koop was Surgeon General. In it he describes how many doctors routinely killed babies born with medical conditions that he had successfully treated. This grisly (and clandestine) practice can only have gotten worse in the subsequent 25 years. The situation in the Netherlands is abhorrent:

http://www.nightingalealliance.org/pdf/Dutch_Euthanasia_Revisited.pdf