Euthanizing Babies in the Netherlands

Here's a not too surprising piece of news from the Netherlands:

Raising the stakes in an excruciating ethical debate, 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 in a handful of cases and reporting them to the government.

Although shocking, I can't say it's really surprising to see something like this happening in the Netherlands. They permitted euthanasia for awhile now on adults, so the natural progression of such a slide down the slippery slope is to start including children.

Read the whole story here.

Rod Dreher at the Corner (National Review Online) has this to add to the Dutch discussion:

For me, the news that the Dutch are euthanizing babies brings back one of the most unsettling mornings of my life. It is 1990, and I am riding in the car through the tranquil, pastoral pastures of rural eastern Holland. My driver is a middle-aged Dutchman who speaks little English. He is sad, and trying to tell me why. We pass a brick farmhouse. He points to it and says, "Last night, suicide." We drive a little further, and he points to another. "Three months, suicide. And there, another suicide." Between my pidgin Dutch and his rudimentary English, I understood that he could not figure out why so many of his neighbors were murdering themselves. In his country, they had peace and general prosperity, hardly a material care in the world. And yet, they were dying from despair. One wonders if a culture that kills its newborns can survive. One wonders if it deserves to.

This is a messed up country.