Toward the new future

Human Life Review, Winter 1999 by McFadden, J P

He is doing a great deal more: he is announcing that "humane" people would condemn to death severely handicapped babies-just as, of course, they would save the category deserving "full treatment"-but that we must establish an "ethics committee" to handle a new category of "in-between" babies; all this will be done without reference to a born citizen's legal right to life if he can be saved from death.

Now we are again brought face to face with the grim truth. Illegal infanticide is being widely practiced now, with little if any opposition from public prosecutors. Clearly the votaries of the "quality of life" ethic could go on with the killing, with little risk of prosecution. They could simply pay lip service to the Administration's attempt to enforce the weak regulations, while being a little more careful in "hard cases" like that of poor Baby Doe. Why don't they?

Well, President Reagan's intervention has of course focused public attention on infanticide, at least momentarily, thus raising the risk of prosecution and the terrible possibility of losing federal money. But the broad phalanx of "professional" medical opposition is also based on that indignant rejection of any attempt to retard the New Future. More, Dr. Strain, for one, evidently sees in the "regs" controversy an opportunity to take a giant step "forward," i.e., to vault the whole question right over any legal or governmental barriers and drop it entirely into the hands of extra-legal "professionals" who would dominate his proposed "ethics" committees.

Indeed, the AAP has already issued a proposal for the make-up of such "local" (a nice reassuring note) review boards; the suggested name is Infant Bioethical Review Committee. In typical authoritative language AAP states flatly: "The IBRC shall consist of at least 8 members and include the following"-it then mandates a "practicing physician," a hospital administrator, a "staff" member and a nurse, so that at least half the board can be right there in the hospital-plus representatives from the "legal profession," the "lay community," and a "disability group" and, most important of all, "an ethicist or a member of the clergy."

The inclusion of a "disability group" member is more than merely interesting: as the AAP well knows, it is the Association for Retarded Citizens and allied "disability" organizations that have joined the Administration in the court battles for enforcement of the Baby Doe regs. Needless to say, all "imperfect" Americans have a life-and-death stake in the whole controversy. If today the "professionals" can kill them at birth, what awaits them in the looming New Future? Just as surely as the Supreme Court's "meaningful life" rationale for abortion is now being applied to infanticide, it can and undoubtedly will be extended (Who would be surprised to discover that it is already happening?). Indeed, the AAP qualifies its description of the disability-group representatives: he might also be a "developmental disability expert"-read another New Future professional-or a "parent of a disabled child." In short, the prototype would allow for someone not disabled, such as Baby Doe's father.