No Government Should Force the End to a Child's Life

[sbeaulieu]

By Marc Siegel

Published February 25, 2011

FoxNews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/02/25/government-force-end-childs-life/

This is a sad state of affairs when government has the ability to override a parent's decision (or attempt to) on a child's life. The question is not whether the child will perish. The father knows there's little to no hope for his son's condition. He simply wants to bring his son home to pass. How is this unreasonable?

~ Shane

[Selene]

By Marc Siegel

Published February 25, 2011

FoxNews.com

http://www.foxnews.c...nd-childs-life/

This is a sad state of affairs when government has the ability to override a parent's decision (or attempt to) on a child's life. The question is not whether the child will perish. The father knows there's little to no hope for his son's condition. He simply wants to bring his son home to pass. How is this unreasonable?

~ Shane

Shane:

This is where I would be getting arrested.

Half my family is in medicine. I cannot imagine a single one of them who would not perform the trach and tell the administration to pound sand.

Sad situation.

Adam

[Mike11]

The baby should be allowed to live out its last days with its family. As far as the technical and political spin all I can say is our death panels are world class and we will rejoice when America joins our Stalinism.

[Greybird]

No government should force the end to a child's life?

Does that apply, say, to wantonly slaughtering children who are hunting birds, trying to avoid starvation?

No? They're suspected of being "insurgents," and thus don't count?

That's about what I expected, Fox News.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Imagine, this is Canadian public health care.

Sarah Palin talked about public health care death panels and the left went ape. If this case is not the result of such a death panel, I don't know what is.

I hope this case will stir up public emotions enough to help pave the way to repealing Obamacare. But most of all, I hope the Canadian bureaucrats get some humanity, authorize the damn tracheotomy, and let the kid's father take him home to die--which is later than the bureaucrats who insist on playing God want him to die.

Michael

[caroljane]

What Joel said.

As an issue, this is for us about the parents who are enduring what no one should have to endure, or about the government. Only for the doctors is it only about the child. They are going by the book. Their book, not mine or Joel's or Shane's or Adam's or Michael's or Sarah Palin's.

As an issue it is about euthanasia, really. Recently a father was released from prison here after being convicted of euthanizing his hopelessly-ill daughter. A husband declared he had euthanized his terminally-ill wife, then backtracked and blamed "doctors' advice." Nobody charged him with anything initially, but there is so much publicity now that who knows what will happen. On your turf in NS Joel, I think.

Or, I suppose,on everybody's turf, our mutual mortal coil.

[Selene]

Only for the doctors is it only about the child. They are going by the book. Their book, ...

As an issue it is about euthanasia, really.

Or, I suppose,on everybody's turf, our mutual mortal coil.

Carol:

It is about the parents individual right to decide for their child. They are the legal custodian. The state has no legal interest in this at all.

How is it only about the child for the doctors? I am not sure what you meant by that.

Adam

[caroljane]

Only for the doctors is it only about the child. They are going by the book. Their book, ...

As an issue it is about euthanasia, really.

Or, I suppose,on everybody's turf, our mutual mortal coil.

Carol:

It is about the parents individual right to decide for their child. They are the legal custodian. The state has no legal interest in this at all.

How is it only about the child for the doctors? I am not sure what you meant by that.

Adam

As I understand the reasoning, the child's life (not custody) belongs to itself, not the parents. The continuation or termination of that life, in this case, is a medical ethics question, and has been left to (or dumped on) the medical professionals.

Adam, you are a parent. You know there is no such thing as an "individual right" there!

Edited February 27, 2011 by daunce lynam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Euthanasia?

Why do I keep smelling a faint waft of eugenics?

Anyway, the following story (which is from a old post) expresses my view of the doctors who are concerned only about the child and manifest that concern by wanting to kill him sooner than later.

I have a favorite story from Ambrose Bierce about shooting little animals. It is from Fantastic Fables.

The Sportsman and the Squirrel

A SPORTSMAN who had wounded a Squirrel, which was making desperate efforts to drag itself away, ran after it with a stick, exclaiming:

"Poor thing! I will put it out of its misery."

At that moment the Squirrels stopped from exhaustion, and looking up at its enemy, said:

"I don't venture to doubt the sincerity of your compassion, though it comes rather late, but you seem to lack the faculty of observation. Do you not perceive by my actions that the dearest wish of my heart is to continue in my misery?"

At this exposure of his hypocrisy, the Sportsman was so overcome with shame and remorse that he would not strike the Squirrel, but pointing it out to his dog, walked thoughtfully away.

Michael

[caroljane]

Euthanasia?

Why do I keep smelling a faint waft of eugenics?

Anyway, the following story (which is from a old post) expresses my view of the doctors who are concerned only about the child and manifest that concern by wanting to kill him sooner than later.

I have a favorite story from Ambrose Bierce about shooting little animals. It is from Fantastic Fables.

The Sportsman and the Squirrel

A SPORTSMAN who had wounded a Squirrel, which was making desperate efforts to drag itself away, ran after it with a stick, exclaiming:

"Poor thing! I will put it out of its misery."

At that moment the Squirrels stopped from exhaustion, and looking up at its enemy, said:

"I don't venture to doubt the sincerity of your compassion, though it comes rather late, but you seem to lack the faculty of observation. Do you not perceive by my actions that the dearest wish of my heart is to continue in my misery?"

At this exposure of his hypocrisy, the Sportsman was so overcome with shame and remorse that he would not strike the Squirrel, but pointing it out to his dog, walked thoughtfully away.

Michael

I may be confused about the specifics of the case under discussion. It's not sloppiness, I just try not to read about dying children, or to retain the details when I can't avoid it. But I thought this case involved the doctors wanting to prolong the child's life, and the parents to end it naturally at home.

If I am wrong and have it backwards, I apologize. But I can't retract my initial statement which I think is true. If the book the docs are going by is wrong, and/or they are wrong to go by it, they are wrong. But changing the book is a whole other topic.

[Selene]

Euthanasia?

Why do I keep smelling a faint waft of eugenics?

Anyway, the following story (which is from a old post) expresses my view of the doctors who are concerned only about the child and manifest that concern by wanting to kill him sooner than later.

I have a favorite story from Ambrose Bierce about shooting little animals. It is from Fantastic Fables.

The Sportsman and the Squirrel

A SPORTSMAN who had wounded a Squirrel, which was making desperate efforts to drag itself away, ran after it with a stick, exclaiming:

"Poor thing! I will put it out of its misery."

At that moment the Squirrels stopped from exhaustion, and looking up at its enemy, said:

"I don't venture to doubt the sincerity of your compassion, though it comes rather late, but you seem to lack the faculty of observation. Do you not perceive by my actions that the dearest wish of my heart is to continue in my misery?"

At this exposure of his hypocrisy, the Sportsman was so overcome with shame and remorse that he would not strike the Squirrel, but pointing it out to his dog, walked thoughtfully away.

Michael

I may be confused about the specifics of the case under discussion. It's not sloppiness, I just try not to read about dying children, or to retain the details when I can't avoid it. But I thought this case involved the doctors wanting to prolong the child's life, and the parents to end it naturally at home.

If I am wrong and have it backwards, I apologize. But I can't retract my initial statement which I think is true. If the book the docs are going by is wrong, and/or they are wrong to go by it, they are wrong. But changing the book is a whole other topic.

Carol:

You did have it backwards. I was confused by your statement and that is why I asked for clarification.

As a point, as a parent, my wife and I had the third child born in Sloan-Ketterings' history. It was discovered, thankfully, that she had malignant cervical cancer in her twenty-third (23) week of the pregnancy. Needless to say, we were told to have an abortion immediately. The doctor book said so!

Had we listened, our twenty-five year old son would not exist today.

Needless to say, it was a very difficult decision to go forward. It entailed a lot of risk. It was second guessed by everyone, but we were right and they were wrong. It is the parent's decision and it is all about rights/ and wrongs.

There is an absolute individual right in the story about the child, as it was in our decision.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol,

You do have it backwards.

The child is terminally ill with a genetic disease, in a coma and can only breathe by means of a respirator. The doctors wish to remove the baby from the respirator and end his life (and, presumably, free the respirator up for another patient).

The rub comes about the tracheotomy, which is a very simple inexpensive procedure. This would allow the infant to breathe on his own until the disease takes him. All the parents want is for the tracheotomy to be performed so they can take their child home to die--as happened once before with his sister (who had the same disease). This would also free up the respirator.

But the bureaucrats are refusing to allow the doctors to perform the procedure. Instead, they intentionally want to end the child's life by removing him from the respirator and letting him suffocate to death. And they are making legal appeals to do this without the parent's consent. On the contrary, they are seeking to actively override the parents wishes and establish a legal precedent.

It's sickening.

Michael

[caroljane]

Carol,

You do have it backwards.

The child is terminally ill with a genetic disease, in a coma and can only breathe by means of a respirator. The doctors wish to remove the baby from the respirator and end his life (and, presumably, free the respirator up for another patient).

The rub comes about the tracheotomy, which is a very simple inexpensive procedure. This would allow the infant to breathe on his own until the disease takes him. All the parents want is for the tracheotomy to be performed so they can take their child home to die--as happened once before with his sister (who had the same disease). This would also free up the respirator.

But the bureaucrats are refusing to allow the doctors to perform the procedure. Instead, they intentionally want to end the child's life by removing him from the respirator and letting him suffocate to death. And they are making legal appeals to do this without the parent's consent. On the contrary, they are seeking to actively override the parents wishes and establish a legal precedent.

It's sickening.

Michael

I should not have commented without proper information, I apologize again. i would just say that they are probably trying to avoid a legal precedent, not set one, I can't think what it is but it will likely turn up on a Law & Order sometime soon.

The Canadian euthanists I cited were not eugenecists nor were those who support them. Nor am I.

In case you were wondering.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol.

I don't wonder about you.

I do wonder about those bureaucrats.

Lord Acton comes to mind: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

What greater power could a bureaucrat have than to pull the plug on a baby?

When people get power, they want to use it.

btw - What kind or legal precedent would they try to avoid? I simply can't imagine any. The only precedent they are trying to avoid, in my humble opinion, is the doctors' adherence to the Hippocratic Oath.

Michael

[caroljane]

Carol.

I don't wonder about you.

I do wonder about those bureaucrats.

Lord Acton comes to mind: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

What greater power could a bureaucrat have than to pull the plug on a baby?

When people get power, they want to use it.

btw - What kind or legal precedent would they try to avoid? I simply can't imagine any. The only precedent they are trying to avoid, in my humble opinion, is the doctors' adherence to the Hippocratic Oath.

Michael

Michael, on the face of it you are utterly right. First do no harm.

This is a chew-on one. To effectively ensure the end of a life by removing a life-support. Then to perform a procedure ( or provide a device) that ensures the continuation of that life for however short or long a time.Then release that life into its custodians. Then....?

Lawyers? PDS? I didn't go to law school in spite of my Lsat because I knew I would never be able to work that hard. Help me out here.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Carol,

In this case, don't ask lawyers for moral insight. Ask your God.

You are a good person. I can tell that. So you know it is far better to seek wisdom wherever you can find it, not technicalities.

Michael

[jriggenbach]

Well, Steve, you tried. The hand-wringing hypocrites ignored you, but you did try.

JR

[caroljane]

Carol,

In this case, don't ask lawyers for moral insight. Ask your God.

You are a good person. I can tell that. So you know it is far better to seek wisdom wherever you can find it, not technicalities.

Michael

Yes. Just trying to get distance from the awful essential sorrow here -- evade it, I suppose.

Thanks for the "good". I try.

[Brant Gaede]

Well, Steve, you tried. The hand-wringing hypocrites ignored you, but you did try.

JR

About 60,000 Americans died in Vietnam from all causes. Maybe 2,000,000 Vietnamese. The "American War" directly fed into the Cambodian genocide that killed, maybe, 3,000,000 Cambodians. The United States is not careful about war. Anybody care about the tens of millions of babies that have died of malaria because of the American War against DDT against the scientific evidence? Or the half a billion people living with this condition? Hypocrisy is the necessary pillow for uncognizant brains desiring a comfortable moral existence.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Well, Steve, you tried. The hand-wringing hypocrites ignored you, but you did try.

Jeff,

Yes, he tried. But it is very hard to convince me that one wrong annuls another. Or that mentioning one wrong should be used as nothing but a propaganda tool for another.

For instance, what would be wrong with someone starting a thread highlighting the wrong Steve tried to graft on this one? I keep trying to see the wrong in that, but it won't come. In fact, I happen to think that would be stronger, since there would be no insinuation that the people who are outraged over the Canadian baby are hypocrites.

I try, too, but I must have some mental impairment that does not let me see the light you so clearly see. I, myself, keep glimpsing at an attempt to instill unearned guilt with this stuff. I try not to see it, but it keeps popping up when I see people using the pivot technique during a discussion.

"Manipulator!" the echo rings in my head. "Manipulator!"

Do you have any suggestion on how I may cure myself?

I suffer so with my blindness...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Personally I'm greatly in favor of the "pivot technique" on these threads. It juices them up. Steve's post was apropos anyway because it restored perspective on the world and its events.

--Brant

tiddlywinks anyone?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Steve's post was apropos anyway because it restored perspective on the world and its events.

Brant,

But... but... but... but... but...

It made me feel such shame at what a hypocrite I am.

And all the other posters on this thread, too.

And probably most all of the readers.

Haw dare we protest a baby being killed without thinking about other babies being killed?

Aaaaaarghhhh!

We are such monsters!

(I may shoot myself in shame and humiliation... At least I'm no longer a baby, so thankfully that will not be an act of a hypocrite...)

Michael

[Greybird]

I don't care to speak to MSK's attempted divination of my motives, nor to the epistemological pixie dust he's again using. (In the third person. I'm not some object out there, Michael, I'm right here.)

I'm weary of, not so much the general hypocrisy — I've come to expect it — but a refusal to see a simple point simply expressed. I took issue with Fox News, not with anyone here — except, implicitly, with the original poster's evaluation of importance. I took issue, mainly, with that pretentious and hypocritical title Fox used.

And that is because it enunciates a principle, or a stab at one, that the powermongers at Fox wouldn't actually know if someone hit them (or their own children) over the head with it. But they pretend to believe in it.

They simply practice deliberate blindness, while reaping an unearned moral dividend for being solicitous and caring, one that they dissipate on dozens of stories every day lauding what the Empire is doing.

Reaping the unearned prestige of a false claim to principled behavior ... that ought to evoke thoughts of particular writings, shouldn't it? Such as one work whose partial dramatization opens on screen in six weeks?

Why, at an Objectivist-ish Website, does this need to be pointed out?

[caroljane]

The Maraachi baby is becoming a Terri Schiavo for the anti-euthanasia, anti-Obamacare machine. I just looked for coverage and found Fox and pro-life blogs; no statements from the doctors or government here. I will have to go out and buy a newspaper. There is a statement from the Detroit hospital they want to transfer him to, and from the father, who I truly hope is receiving more comfort than stress from all the help and support he is receiving.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I'm weary of, not so much the general hypocrisy — I've come to expect it — but a refusal to see a simple point simply expressed.

Steve,

Do I understand that you are weary of people refusing to see a simple point simply expressed--when you refuse to see a simple point simply expressed from them?

In case I had any doubt, your backup, JR, was quite elegant in his phrase: "The hand-wringing hypocrites ignored you..."

As one of the "hand-wringing hypocrites" he referred to, I don't see you complaining that he missed any point. Nor do I see you correcting him, since he practically spoke in your name.

So what is it? Is the point of your post that everybody but you and he are hypocrites (hand-wringing hypocrites at that), or is there something else that we hypocrites should take seriously? I generally don't take things all that seriously when someone is insinuating--or outright saying that--I am a hypocrite.

If you want to be taken seriously, you need to take others seriously.

It's called the trader principle.

As in your wise words, "Why, at an Objectivist-ish Website, does this need to be pointed out?"

Michael