Letting Sick Newborns Die Now Gets Support From UK Church
AdventureDad | November 15Last week I talked about a hot debate in United Kingdom regarding the right to kill severely damaged newborns. In a very surprising move, the Church of England has now publicly said that it’s supporting doctors who 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.
Lots of people are obviously upset over the church possibly supporting the killing of babies. I’m extremely surprised as well. And I’m still pro-choice and not a very religious person. The reason for this surprising support is that it might be the compassionate thing to do if they newborn is in pain and will not live long.
The church stressed that it was not saying some lives were not worth living, but said there were “strong proportionate reasons” for “overriding the presupposition that life should be maintained”.
The bishop’s submission continued: “There may be occasions where, for a Christian, compassion will override the ‘rule’ that life should inevitably be preserved.
“Disproportionate treatment for the sake of prolonging life is an example of this”.
I can see that point of view as well but still question doing this for mostly financial motives. And what if we make the wrong decision and let a newborn die who could have had a productive life? I can’t imagine that anything will change in the near future since the public seems to be strongly against anything that interferes with the life of a newborn. But the debate will surely continue.
This disturbs me. The Church of England is a Protestant church and they are standing by while babies are killed. This is just wrong.
I suppose my Catholicism clouds my judgement, but a life is a life. In all forms! Disabled or not!
This is a difficult item to debate, because it is not a black and white discussion. As a matter of fact it is probably more shades of gray than anything.
On the one side, if it were my child, I don’t think that there would be any length I would not go in order to save her life. On the other side, when does it become more about “me” than about the child that I am trying to “save”?
Reaching back for an old example (because this is the anniversary of her death), in 1984 the case of Baby Fae (http://www.ascensionhealth.org/ethics/public/cases/case4.asp)was big news. A month old child that received a baboon’s heart in replace of her own malformed heart. She lived for 20 days before her body rejected the heart and she passed away.
Looking back, who did this case help? Scientists who study (studied) what happened for future cases, parents that hoped against hope to keep their daughter alive? Was it of any real benefit to Baby Fae? Did anybody care about how she “felt” about it all?
Like I said. Tough topic.
I agree — this is VERY disturbing. Who appointed the Bishop and/or the Church as God??
Isn’t there a time and a purpose for everything — hmmm I believe that they should go back and ready their bibles.
I can’t even imagine - there’s something terribly wrong with this.
I’m pretty pro-choice, but once a baby is born changes everything. I’m not sure why you mentioned that in this post…
OK- I’m back.
I can appreciate that there are times when heroic measures will be inadequate to preserve a life. I also agree that there is a time and a place to say enough is enough. However, the church has long been against this idea, no matter what the circumstances.
Let’s also agree that ’sick’ and ’severely disabled’ are completely different things. Babies are born every day with little chance of life, but for whom extraordinary measures would allow them to live for mere hours or days. These children MAY be the type for whom you wish to decide whether the effort is in the long run simply cruel. Sometimes having the technology brings with it the responsibility NOT to use it.
There are also children born each day for whom a simple operation, or life-sustaining measures routinely used on ‘healthy’ children would allow them to live. They may not, however, live what some would call a ‘full life.’ They may be confined to a wheelchair, or might live a only a few years. They may be mentally impaired, blind, or deaf. They could have disabilities that would challenge not only the child but the family.
This is the grey area where we tread now. When you make these types of public pronouncements, you muddy the water and allow doctors to impose their own beliefs onto parents. A doctor can now safely tell a parent who has long believed that life is sacred that ‘even the church has agreed that sometimes sick children should be allowed to die.’
Sorry. Those are awfully big shoes we are trying to fill here, and I doubt that any of us has the foresight to predict fully what a child will be, or, as I have said before, what will become of us for having known them.
I’ve known many folks in these circumstances. Some have divorced over the stress. Some have never recovered from it. But a man of the church should be the one saying that ‘God has a plan for all of us, including this child.’ We could go with the ‘that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’ or ‘God would not have allowed us to develop the technologies if he meant for us to withhold them,’ but the truth of the matter is simple.
Only God gets to decide who lives and dies. Our responsibilities as moral human beings is to take the knowledge we have and use it for good, to benefit others. Anything less is sinful. And any medical organization that entertains debate on ‘mercy killing’ should be immediately sanctioned and disbanded. Hypocrites would be dismayed at any such notion.
And now, if you’ll turn to number 598, we can all join in “Amazing Grace.” Sermon ended.
I can see how this would actually be a good decision to make. Liken it to a DNR (do not resuscitate) order on a terminally ill patient. there are times when, if heroic measures are taken, a person can be saved. There are also times when it is time to give up the heroics and let the quality of life be more important than quantity.
I don’t like the implications of ‘leave a child to die.’ Surely the point is that they will do whatever they can to keep the child from suffering. Isn’t that the point? - letting the child slip away peacefully (even if that peace is the result of anesthetics), rather than keeping him or her suffering?
How many times have you heard a story that went something like this: “The doctors said I would be a vegetable, but I proved them wrong…” How about those whose doctors told them they wouldn’t live past infancy, and ended up living full, happy lives as adults? You just never know…and I do believe it is all in God’s hands, so it would be a terrible mistake to take the precious lives of newborns into our own.
[…] After AdventureDad of The Blogfathers brought me this tragic news about a group of physicians debating the right to allow ’severely handicapped’ newborns to die, a bishop in the UK comes forward and states that his church may agree with this practice. […]
[…] Now this!- I respond in the comments […]