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Published On: Mon, Apr 20th, 2015

Princeton’s Peter Singer argues it’s ‘reasonable’ to deny care for disabled babies

In a radio interview Sunday, Princeton University ethics professor Peter Singer submitted that it is “reasonable” for the government or private insurance companies to deny treatment to severely disabled babies.

Singer contends that the health care system under Obamacare should be more honest about rationing and that the country should acknowledge the necessity of “intentionally ending the lives of severely disabled infants.”

photo/Facebook

photo/Facebook

Singer told thes show that rationing is already happening, explaining doctors and hospitals routinely make decisions based on costs.

“It’s different in the U.S. system, in a way, because it doesn’t do this overtly; maybe it doesn’t do it as much. And the result is it spends about twice as much on health care as some other countries for very little extra benefit in terms of the outcome.”

Klein quoted from a section of Singer’s 1993 treatise “Practical Ethics,” titled “Taking Life: Humans.”

In the section, Singer argued for the morality of “non-voluntary euthanasia” for human beings not capable of understanding the choice between life and death, including “severely disabled infants, and people who through accident, illness, or old age have permanently lost the capacity to understand the issue involved.”

Asked whether he envisions denying treatment to disabled infants to become more common in the U.S. under the new health-care law, Singer replied: “It does happen. Not necessarily because of costs.”

He continued (via WND):

If an infant is born with a massive hemorrhage in the brain that means it will be so severely disabled that if the infant lives it will never even be able to recognize its mother, it won’t be able to interact with any other human being, it will just lie there in the bed and you could feed it but that’s all that will happen, doctors will turn off the respirator that is keeping that infant alive.

I don’t know whether they are influenced by reducing costs. Probably they are just influenced by the fact that this will be a terrible burden for the parents to look after, and there will be no quality of life for the child.

So we are already taking steps that quite knowingly and intentionally are ending the lives of severely disabled infants.

And I think we ought to be more open in recognizing that this happens.

 

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- Roxanne "Butter" Bracco began with the Dispatch as Pittsburgh Correspondent, but will be providing reports and insights from Washington DC, Maryland and the surrounding region. Contact Roxie aka "Butter" at theglobaldispatch@gmail ATTN: Roxie or Butter Bracco

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