Culture of Death Advancing in Belgium

ANTWERP, Belgium (ChurchMilitant.com) - A majority of physicians polled in Belgium support the disturbing trend of infanticide, according to a new study.

Published in the Obstetrics and Gynecology journal, it found that nine in 10 physicians surveyed in the Flemish-speaking Flanders "agree that in the event of a serious (non-lethal) neonatal condition, administering drugs with the explicit intention to end neonatal life is acceptable."

According to Catherine Robertson of Right To Life UK:

Less than 10 years ago, there was a strong condemnation of the idea of ending a baby's life after it had been born, regardless of whether or not it had a disability, when this idea was floated by academics in the British Medical Journal. Tragically, the thought of intentionally ending the life of an unborn baby and newborn baby now appears to have gone from an outlandish academic thought experiment to be seen as something that is morally acceptable by these health care professionals in Belgium.

For his part, Michael Robinson of the U.K. Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) said in a release: "It is deeply disturbing that medical professionals who should protect and value each human life hold these shocking beliefs."

Titled "Healthcare professionals' attitudes towards termination of pregnancy at viable stage," the study was funded by the government-funded Research Foundation Flanders. It found that 93.6% of physicians surveyed in Flanders believe that infanticide is an acceptable practice for medical professionals.

The mail survey was "conducted among all physicians and paramedical professionals involved in late TOP [termination of pregnancy] decision‐making in all eight centers with a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Flanders, Belgium (N = 117). The questionnaire contained general and case‐based attitude items," according to the paper's materials and methods section.

The study found:

Late TOP [termination of pregnancy] is highly accepted in both lethal fetal conditions (100%) and serious (but not lethal) fetal conditions (95.6%). Where the fetus is healthy, 19.8% of respondents agrees with late TOP for maternal psychological problems and fewer respondents (13.2%) agree with late TOP in case of maternal socio‐economic problems (p=0.002). Physicians more often prefer feticide over neonatal palliative care in case of non‐lethal fetal conditions compared to paramedical professionals (68.1% vs. 53.2%, p=0.013).

The study shows that Belgian medical professionals overwhelming support killing babies that happen to have conditions they do not favor. According to the study: "Almost nine out of 10 respondents (89.1%) agree that in the event of a serious (non‐lethal) neonatal condition, administering drugs with the explicit intention to end neonatal life is acceptable."

The term "serious (non-lethal) neonatal condition" was not defined in the paper.

"Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a person in the sense of subject of a moral right to life," the paper declared. "What we call 'after-birth abortion' should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled."

No Longer Unspeakable

While infanticide was once considered unspeakable, it is becoming more acceptable among some elites. Infanticide was long a precept of the eugenics movement that began in the United States among progressives of the last century and came to its fruition in the death camps of National Socialist Germany.

Child euthanasia (German: Kinder-Euthanasie) was the organized murder of mentally and physically handicapped children and young people up to 16 years of age in more than 30 so-called special children's wards. Starting in 1939, some 5,000 children were murdered by the program — an antecedent of the subsequent murder of adults and children in the concentration camps.

Eugenics, the racist pseudoscience espoused by Nazi Germany, was founded in the United States in the years before World War I. The logic of culling so-called mental and racial defectives led elites, led by organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment, to support forced confinement and sterilization of the mentally and physically handicapped, as well as Italians, Hispanics, Jews, dark-haired people and the habitually criminal.

According to historian Edwin Black, a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population," went so far as to advocate euthanasia. Lethal gassing was the method preferred by eugenicists.

Robinson of SPUC remarked:

The last time dehumanizing attitudes such as these gained widespread popularity was during the operation of the T4 Program in Nazi Germany when disabled and vulnerable humans were regarded as "life unworthy of life" [Lebensunwertes Leben]. With the resurgence of such attitudes, there has never been a more vital time to uphold and defend the right to life of every human.

In the United Kingdom, the wording of the 1967 UK Abortion Act has allowed the practice of abortion until birth for preborn babies diagnosed with any disability, including Down syndrome, cleft lip and club foot. Also, in 2012 two British medical "ethicists" claimed that physicians should be permitted to murder disabled and unwanted newborn babies, arguing that they are not "actual persons."

The article in the British Medical Journal by Francesca Minerva and Alberto Guibilini, titled "Afterbirth abortion: why should the baby live?", contended that mothers should be able to choose death for their newborn children shortly after birth, saying that the children are "morally irrelevant" and have "no moral right to life."

The authors equate the murder of a newborn to the abortion of preborn children, arguing that both are merely "potential persons." Even if a newborn is perfectly healthy, an "after-birth abortion" (infanticide) is permissible if the child is inconvenient, unwanted or too expensive for the parents.

They stated:

Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a person in the sense of subject of a moral right to life. What we call "after-birth abortion" should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

At the time, the paper stirred controversy and even death threats against the authors. But the practice of infanticide has only grown in the United Kingdom and in acceptance by physicians elsewhere.

The practice is gaining acceptance in the United States, as well. In January 2019, democrat governor Ralph Northam of Virginia defended state legislation that would have allowed babies to be killed during labor. A pediatrician, Northam said that babies with disabilities could be left to die after birth. He said that if a woman should desire an abortion, even in labor, the baby could be delivered and then "resuscitated if that's what the mother and family desired, and then a discussion would ensue" between doctors and the mother.