And in a non-clown world, the parents should both be able to and trusted to consent on their behalf like they do with everything else in the child's life.
If a kid is born with horrific hydrocephalus or the like, it should be that everyone involved can be adult enough to make the decision to ends its misery rather than be forced to let it suffer just because the government says you have to.
But since we live in clown world, we cannot trust neither parents, nor hospitals or the government to even take a step in that direction.
I don’t agree, actually. I can see the argument for withdrawing continuing care to keep a person artificially alive (e.g. the Terri Schiavo case, or the Boy in the Bubble), but I do not agree with the parents or state deciding to euthanize an individual, who is cognizant (and again, that’s an important consideration), against their will…
That’s murder. Or, if you like, “justified homicide”. That’s where I draw the line, personally. YMMV, and that’s fine, but it scares me a bit that we’ve gone from Terri Schiavo to this level of discussion, in twenty years…
I wasn't part of the discussion of Terri Schiavo and that has always been my position. There are levels of suffering in life where it is kindness to let a person go instead of artificially keeping them in abject misery with no escape just so you can say "Look my hands are clean, I never will ever ever ever do anything to dirty them, my purity is more important than your pain." Its cowardice plain and simple and it always has been. Especially if you think "let them slowly starve to death" or whatever comes with withdrawing care is valid, because it keeps your hands clean through a loophole and that seems to be what more people are concerned with instead of the suffering person.
You can call it what you want to make it sound worse, but the end result is a person is free to go to heaven out of a body that cannot be healed and causes them to not be able to even live.
Now, that is a far cry from being willing to make that the norm or legal, because I don't trust neither government nor most of society to be able to make such decisions and I'd rather they not even be able to think of doing it because of how little I trust them. I thought that well prior to Canada proving the slippery slope of it and I do even more now.
Also if they are cognizant, then their wishes should always be taken into the greatest account. If they wish to fight then no one should be able to revoke that or even question it, and any who does is purely evil.
Interestingly, there’s a “Judge John Deed” episode that covers this quite nicely (not sure of the title) where a boy needs to have an organ replacement from an animal, and refuses it on the grounds of being a vegan, but his parents want to force him to take the transplant against his will. Won’t spoil it except to say that it gets ethically… Messy.
But the fact that we’ve gone from that to actively discussing whether parents should be able to consent to actually killing their child (because that’s what it comes down to, in the end) is quite frightening, imho…
And in a non-clown world, the parents should both be able to and trusted to consent on their behalf like they do with everything else in the child's life.
If a kid is born with horrific hydrocephalus or the like, it should be that everyone involved can be adult enough to make the decision to ends its misery rather than be forced to let it suffer just because the government says you have to.
But since we live in clown world, we cannot trust neither parents, nor hospitals or the government to even take a step in that direction.
I don’t agree, actually. I can see the argument for withdrawing continuing care to keep a person artificially alive (e.g. the Terri Schiavo case, or the Boy in the Bubble), but I do not agree with the parents or state deciding to euthanize an individual, who is cognizant (and again, that’s an important consideration), against their will…
That’s murder. Or, if you like, “justified homicide”. That’s where I draw the line, personally. YMMV, and that’s fine, but it scares me a bit that we’ve gone from Terri Schiavo to this level of discussion, in twenty years…
I wasn't part of the discussion of Terri Schiavo and that has always been my position. There are levels of suffering in life where it is kindness to let a person go instead of artificially keeping them in abject misery with no escape just so you can say "Look my hands are clean, I never will ever ever ever do anything to dirty them, my purity is more important than your pain." Its cowardice plain and simple and it always has been. Especially if you think "let them slowly starve to death" or whatever comes with withdrawing care is valid, because it keeps your hands clean through a loophole and that seems to be what more people are concerned with instead of the suffering person.
You can call it what you want to make it sound worse, but the end result is a person is free to go to heaven out of a body that cannot be healed and causes them to not be able to even live.
Now, that is a far cry from being willing to make that the norm or legal, because I don't trust neither government nor most of society to be able to make such decisions and I'd rather they not even be able to think of doing it because of how little I trust them. I thought that well prior to Canada proving the slippery slope of it and I do even more now.
Also if they are cognizant, then their wishes should always be taken into the greatest account. If they wish to fight then no one should be able to revoke that or even question it, and any who does is purely evil.
Interestingly, there’s a “Judge John Deed” episode that covers this quite nicely (not sure of the title) where a boy needs to have an organ replacement from an animal, and refuses it on the grounds of being a vegan, but his parents want to force him to take the transplant against his will. Won’t spoil it except to say that it gets ethically… Messy.
But the fact that we’ve gone from that to actively discussing whether parents should be able to consent to actually killing their child (because that’s what it comes down to, in the end) is quite frightening, imho…