The Netherlands has started to euthanize some of their "terminally ill" newborns. These so called "mercy killings" were in accordance with new guidelines by the Dutch government and include the following:
The Groningen Protocol, as the hospital's guidelines have come to be known, would create a legal framework for permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns deemed to be in similar pain from incurable disease or extreme deformities.
The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the child's medical team and independent doctors agree the pain cannot be eased and there is no prospect for improvement, and when parents think it's best.
Examples include extremely premature births, where children suffer brain damage from bleeding and convulsions; and diseases where a child could only survive on life support for the rest of its life, such as severe cases of spina bifida and epidermosis bullosa, a rare blistering illness.
The disturbing part is that the panel will get to decide whom they will terminate and who will survive. This prospect immediately brought to mind a study released by UC Berkeley titled "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin. The study compared Hitler, Mussolini and former President Ronald Reagan as right-wing conservatives that "preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form."
The paper also stated that some of the psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:
- Fear and aggression
- Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Need for cognitive closure
- Terror management
All this seems to be setting up the premise that being a conservative is like having a mental disorder allowing a medical panel to authorize the "mercy killing" of so many unwanted and incurable people. Perhaps a leap? Maybe, but have you seen and heard the foaming-mouth liberals and their outright hatred for the right the past few years?
