Prestigious British Medical Group Urges Consideration of Euthanasia for Premature Babies.(Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists)

As NRL News goes to press, a prestigious private think tank in Great Britain is about to submit recommendations to deal with what the Nuffield Council on Bioethics describes as "Critical care decisions in fetal and neonatal medicine: ethical issues." Among the most controversial recommendations submitted came from Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), which persuaded the council to consider the "ethics" of killing disabled newborns in its inquiry into the issues surrounding premature birth.

While most of the attention paid to RCOG's startling recommendations focused on the threat to babies born with disabilities, in fact its recommendations would sweep in many more newborns deemed to lack a sufficiently high "quality of life."

While RCOG's submission did not "formally" call for what the Times of London described as "active euthanasia" of newborns (which is currently illegal in Britain), RCOG "wants the mercy killing of newborn babies to be debated by society."

Part of RCOG's submission stated, "We would like the working party ... to think more radically about non-resuscitation, withdrawal of treatment decisions, the best interests test and active euthanasia as they are ways of widening the management options available to the sickest of newborns."

Naturally, disability rights groups were alarmed. "Disabled people, particularly those with conditions regarded as 'severe' will be both appalled and afraid by the RCOG's call," Alison Davis of No Less Human, a disability rights group affiliated with the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said in a press release.

"Already we are aware that disabled babies are killed up to birth because of 'severe disability.' Once it is established that killing is acceptable on grounds of disability it is inevitable that it will spread to encompass increasing numbers of victims."

RCOG pointed to an "inequity" in current British law, which allows unborn babies to be killed by abortion up to birth if there is a "substantial risk of such physical or mental abnormalities that the child if born would be seriously handicapped." However, if the disability goes undiagnosed and a baby is born who would otherwise have been aborted, there is no current legal way to kill the now-born child.