By Mark P. Mostert, Christian Post. (Photo: Pixabay)
It’s not exactly stop-the-press news that the insanity of euthanasia is spreading everywhere.
Over the last several decades, there have been determined and often successful efforts to legalize and weaponize death on demand, anywhere, anytime, for anyone, for any reason.
A long time ago, pro-death activists began by assuring a gullible world that euthanasia would only be for a very few isolated patients, and that these patients would have to meet very strict and immovable guidelines before being medically killed.
Great gobs of energy were spent cloaking killing as medical treatment. The logic: If killing is a medical “treatment,” and we all know medical treatment is good, then medicalized killing is good and in the “best interests” of the patient.
In addition, other well-worn arguments have hammered us ad nauseam in the public square: Patients have a right to choose to die, “my body, my choice” and “no quality of life left.”
But over time, guidelines are often loosened or removed. No longer is euthanasia only for isolated cases. And nowhere is the expansion more chilling than when it reaches children.
In the Netherlands, children between 1 and 12 were, until two years ago, safe from being killed. Then the rules changed to allow euthanasia for this age group.
The first child to be euthanized under the new rules was reported last December in a dry government report. I noted then that the report was long on apparatchik-speech but short on details. No age, no detailed explanation of the medical conditions that prompted death. Just the usual vaguely self-congratulatory nonsense: By the rules, a rare case, for the good of the child — blah blah blah.
Now we know more, and it’s heartbreaking.
This poor child was almost two years old.
Born prematurely at 26 weeks, he or she had severe brain damage resulting in frequent uncontrolled seizures and severe cerebral palsy. There were also significant respiratory and swallowing problems. The child was also blind. The parents and doctors all agreed that the child was unlikely to survive into adolescence or adulthood