Liverpool Care Pathway - The Case For Brewer

When comparison may not discern differences, it is legitimate to suggest the one thing and the other to be indistinguishable and, therefore, identical.


Thus, the Liverpool Care Pathway and the Shipman Care Pathway...

So, also, the Groningen Protocol and the Collin Brewer Protocol.

The Groningen Protocol was developed at the University Medical Center at Groningen. It bears comparison in that respect to the Liverpool Care Pathway, not only in that it bears the name of the city where it was developed, but that it may involve a decision to end a life that lacks 'quality'.

Its authors say the Protocol was developed in order to facilitate with the decision making process when considering actively ending the life of a newborn human child. It provides guidelines to assess the life worthy or not worthy of life within a legal and medical framework. The Protocol was declared to be mandatory by the Dutch Society for Paediatrics in July 2005.

The Collin Brewer Protocol

After-birth abortion is a euphemism dreamed up by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. This has previously been reported in these pages.

This unsavoury pair contributed a paper entitled "After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?" to the Journal of Medical Ethics. This was published in February last year. An abstract follows -

ABSTRACT: Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do nothave anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showingthat (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have thesame moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact thatboth are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3)adoption is not always in the best interest of actualpeople, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birthabortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in allthe cases where abortion is, including cases where thenewborn is not disabled.

CONCLUSIONS: If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) forthe potential parents are good enough reasons for having anabortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status ofthe newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither hasany moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then thesame reasons which justify abortion should also justify thekilling of the potential person when it is at the stage ofa newborn.

The Washington Post reported in its opinions column -

The fact is, it is not as unusual for children to be left to die after a failed abortion as some might think. Right now in Philadelphia, abortionist Kermit Gosnell is on trial for the murder of seven infants who were born alive. According to District Attorney Seth Williams, Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord.” Prosecutors said that Gosnell ended hundreds of pregnancies in this way. “These killings became so routine that no one could put an exact number on them. They were considered ‘standard procedure.’ ”

May this be called a pre-term Groningen Protocol...?

The Post continues -

Across the border in Canada, the government reports that between 2000 and 2009, 491 babies were left to die after they were born alive during abortions. There are no similar statistics here in the United States, but according to the Abortion Survivors Network there are an estimated 44,000 abortion survivors living in the country today. How many more did not survive for lack of medical care?

When comparison may not discern differences, it is legitimate to suggest the one thing and the other to be indistinguishable and, therefore, identical. May we, then, not rightly suggest that the slippery slope is already a sheer drop and that the case for the Collin Brewer Protocol is proven?

Whatever is your belief, it is true to say that how you view the person affects how you treat the person and, more especially, persons some ethicists might classify as non-persons.

By redefining infanticide as after-birth abortion and the moral status of the individual as a person, murder becomes permissible.

It is an old ploy to keep floating an idea that, thereby, it may cease to appear so novel and extreme. 

Thus does the outrageous gain plausibility and acceptance, by becoming almost tiresome by its very mention. 

It slips in under the radar, a fifth column of ideas that are no longer foreign to our concepts of right and wrong simply because they have permeated our very consciousness and infected our moral outlook, a dark cancer in our soul. 


October Baby 

October Baby October Baby tells the story of college student Hannah whose increasing anxiety and sudden collapse point to the surprising circumstances of her birth. Hannah soon learns from her parents she was adopted and is the survivor of a failed abortion attempt.