Webster’s definition of "infanticide": "The murder of an infant; one who murders an infant"
We live in a day when there is very little regard for human life.
In 1982, Baby Doe of Bloomington, Indiana, was born with Down’s syndrome. His food pipe and windpipe were connected which could have been corrected with surgery. Because the baby had Down’s syndrome, the parents refused all treatment and the baby died. The Indiana Supreme Court upheld the parent’s decision.
In 1982, Baby Jane Doe was born in New York with spina bifida and a potential hydrocephalus. Normally, they would have closed the spinal defect and put a shunt in to prevent hydrocephalus. When the parents learned that the baby might be mentally retarded, they refused surgery. Miraculously, skin grew over the spinal defect, closing it. The parents then agreed to have a shunt put in. While the baby lived, a federal judge ruled that the parents had the right to let the baby die without treatment.
In both of these cases, the parents were granted the right to take the baby’s life by withholding treatment. The babies were refused treatment because of a handicap.
Richard Lamm, the former governor of Colorado, said he did not approve of giving intensive medical treatment and therapy to babies who could only roll over after a full year of treatment. He believed that the money budgeted for such children would be better spent on those of higher quality of life. He also suggested that the elderly who are chronically ill and require ongoing, expensive medical care should accept their "duty to die" and get out of the way.
Peter Singer, a bioethicist from Australia, suggests that some newborns be killed at birth because they do not meet his criteria of "personhood".
Francis Crick, the Nobel laureate for his discovery of DNA, suggests that we not declare a newborn a "person" until three days after birth, following a battery of tests. He also wants society to adopt a mandatory death law for people past the age of 80.
James Watson, the man who cracked the genetic code, said, "If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice…the doctor could allow the child to die if the parent so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering". – There have been several accounts of third trimester "aborted" babies that were born alive. When this happens the babies are removed from the delivery room and placed in some out of the way room and left to die.
When is a person considered a person? Why is it a child until they find out there could be an illness? Why is it a person only when it is convienent?
