The Groningen Protocol

It sounds like the title of a Robert Ludlum spy thriller. Fedora'd characters lurking in shadowed corners, blind drops and microdots, a retired Stazi officer making an unlikely alliance with an embittered, embattled CIA agent racing against time to save the world - and his girl. A terrific read, a lovely bit of disposable fiction. Would that it were. The Groningen Protocol is all too real. It is the process by which a committee of doctors at the Groningen Academic Hospital in The Netherlands decides to kill sick babies. Not turn off the life-support machines. Not stop treatment. Not decide not to use heroic measures, and provide palliative care until nature takes its course. Kill, as in inject with lethal drugs. The same as you'd do with a cat or dog. Put down. Euthanize. Put out of their misery. Kill. And unlike abortion, this is not the parent making the decision to kill the child. A panel of doctors decides. The parents wishes may be considered, but the decision is made by "medical professionals." The same ones, presumably, that once took an oath to "first, do no harm" and to "administer no deadly medicine." Hugh Hewitt wonders why much of the blogosphere has been silent on this issue to date. Perhaps, like me, other bloggers have simply been too shocked to have much to say. Those who have spoken have done so very elequently, and as a result, I don't have much to add. Perhaps I will later. Most likely. Pastor and theologian Dr. Mark D. Roberts has assembled a useful and insightful set of resources. UPDATE: A tie-in I have yet to see is the connection between the Groningen Protocol and Susan Smith. You remember her, right? She's the young mother - excuse me, that should be "young woman" - who murdered - excuse me, that should be "exercised her reproductive rights" her young children - excuse me, that should be, "products-of-conception" - by strapping them into their car seats and pushing the car into a pond - excuse me, that should be, "creatively utilizing the methods available to her". The reason she did that, she said at her trial, was that the young boys had become an inconvient drag on her social calendar. IOW, they adversely impacted her quality of life and mental health. I still don't understand why "reproductive rights" advocates are not agitating for her release. I'm certain that supporters and apologists for the Groningen Protocol will come to her aid. She's quite a heroine to the cause of individual freedom, wouldn't you say? Certainly not the cold-blooded child murderer she's been portrayed as. /swiftian sarcastic irony, for the clueless