Sidesspot

Hugh Hewitt links to an AP story about the Groningen Academic Hospital, a hospital in the Netherlands, which has admitted that it has been euthanizing babies for some time:

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.

Now, we should not shrink from understanding the cases involved here. This is not a concentration camp in which otherwise healthy children are being put to death. These babies have serious, heart-breaking conditions and are suffering greatly:

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.

In addition, the hospital estimates that the medical protocol being written by the hospital for euthanizing babies: "would be applicable in about 10 cases per year in the Netherlands, a country of 16 million people." So, we are not talking about large numbers of babies. (Pardon me, "cases." Let's not humanize them.)

What we are talking about, though, is the next step after consensual, doctor-assisted suicide. Namely, the non-consensual termination of life. More bluntly, they are killing these babies. They are killing babies for noble (in their minds) reasons, but they are killing babies nonetheless.

Whenever Christians point to an act with horror and alarm, the secular thought leaders always seem to (i) scoff at the lack of sophistication of people of faith and (ii) speak soothingly of their humane intentions, that the latest act is really no big deal, and certainly is NOT comparable to what occurred in Nazi Germany. Yet the slide towards that very moral state occurs decade by decade. It is creeping in like the fog, and is imperceptibly, but most definitely, beginning to envelop us. First abortion, then do not resuscitate, then withhold food and water, then consensual doctor-assisted suicide, then selective reduction, then designer babies (the Ubermensch is coming!), now non-consensual killing of babies.

Don't worry. The slide will go no further than this.

Update: Hugh Hewitt has linked to some other site posts on this story, reproduced here for convenience:

Dr. John Mark Reynolds
Pastor Mark D. Roberts
Captain's Quarters
Froggy Ruminations
Bogus Gold

Hugh finishes with a bit of frustration:

This news from Holland is deeply horrifying, and the blogosphere is generally silent, which means, what, indifferent? Or embarrassed? Some of my favorite bloggers have said nothing. Nothing? Perhaps they are unaware of the story. But for all the reasons that Drs. David Allen White and Mark D. Roberts detailed today, indifference or indecision is not really an option. The advocacy of the establishment of committees charged with dealing out death --and the admission that such decisions have already been taken in the West-- is not an event about which one can really be neutral.

Yes, this is one to get upset about, go off the deep end, push the panic button, whatever you'd like to call it. Can we draw the line here, finally?

Update 2: Pastor Mark Daniels also weighs in.