Holland's euthanasia

The news last week that some terminally ill newborns in the Netherlands have been administered lethal doses of sedatives to end their lives came as a shock. The shock was not that hospitals are helping people die. Hospitals in Holland and around the world already conduct mercy killings by withholding treatments that could extend patients' lives.

But one shock is to learn that the practice of euthanizing children already has begun before the Netherlands has even adopted guidelines stipulating the circumstances in which these procedures would be allowed.

The larger shock is over the leap that has already been made from passively withholding life-extending treatments to actively administering lethal drugs to terminally ill children.

The so-called Groningen Protocol, named for the Amsterdam hospital where it was developed, would allow doctors to actively end the life of a terminally ill newborn if the parents want it done and if independent doctors determine that the child could only survive on life support and that the child's extreme pain cannot be eased.

Oregon is the only U.S. state that has made it legal for doctors to help terminally ill patients -- but not children -- commit suicide. Doctors are allowed to administer lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients, a practice challenged by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft but upheld last spring by a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Obviously, newborns cannot make decisions about extending their own lives. The question is whether any state or country should provide the legal framework for making the decision for them.

The image of a doctor -- no matter how well-meaning -- injecting or intravenously introducing lethal drugs into the bloodstream of a helpless child for the purpose of ending its life is troubling. Under the Groningen Protocol, doctors and parents could decide the fate of children up to age 12.

The Groningen Protocol is the ultimate slippery slope, one with moral implications that must be carefully deliberated before any such practice becomes accepted.

Will a committee of doctors next decide whether people who are in comas would be better off dead? Will they decide for terminally ill people who also are mentally ill? Do we want doctors deciding which human beings' lives should be allowed to continue?

Who among us can judge the quality or value of another person's life?