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I agree with Dr. Kuhse and Prof. Singer on many points. It is of course ethically defensible to decide sometimes that a seriously handicapped newborn baby may be better off dead, that medicine can do no more to help, and that to stop or not initiate medical treatment may be the best we can do. It is equally true and ethically defensible that these decisions are sometimes based at least in part on predictions about the baby's present and future quality of life. It would be foolish to pretend that quality-of-life considerations should be or can be excluded from these decisions. I argue that the interests and wishes of the family must be given serious consideration, if not that they should be decisive at the expense of the newborn's best interests.
I do, however, seriously object to the claim that some infants with severe disabilities should be killed. I will not repeat the familiar philosophical and other arguments as to why there is arguably, given certain conditions, a significant moral difference between not treating and killing. Instead, my refutation of infanticide will take a more indirect route.
- Type
- Part II: Death and Dying
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- Copyright
- Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1986
References
Kuhse, H. Singer, P., Should the Baby Live? The Problem of Handicapped Infants (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Id. at 117.Google Scholar
Keyserlingk, E.W., Sanctity of Life or Quality of Life in the Context of Ethics, Medicine and Law (Law Reform Commission of Canada, Ottawa, 1979).Google Scholar
See, e.g., E. Shils, The Sanctity of Life, in Life or Death: Ethics and Options (ed. Labby, D.H.) (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), at 2–38.Google Scholar
In their book, Kuhse and Singer base this claim in part of the definition of person provided by John Locke, namely: “A thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places” (quoted in Kuhse and Singer, supra note 1, at 132). But it would be wrong to suggest that Locke would support the view that until we get to that stage, on our way to that stage, we are not persons.Google Scholar
Kuhse and Singer, supra note 1, at 138.Google Scholar
Duff and Campbell, quoted in id. at 187.Google Scholar
Id. at 192.Google Scholar
Id. at v.Google Scholar