About that Supposedly Mythical "Slippery Slope"

We are frequently told indignantly that slippery slope arguments "don't work," are "invalid" and "don't apply" to euthanasia. I think that is because when you advocate committing certain evil actions that are likely to lead to other evil actions you just want to shut down debate until later. Just delaying gives time to get people used to the first evil, so the next can be introduced without fuss.

This has been the story in the Netherlands over the past few decades with respect to euthanasia. At first it had to be specifically requested by a person with a terminal illness who was mentally competent. See all the safeguards? Take a look at the debate going on now (bearing in mind Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil"):

"AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, December 7, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Dutch health researcher has called on the nation's government to allow physicians to euthanize newborns based on foreseen suffering, rather than only actual suffering, reports the Dutch medical journal Zorgkrant.

Hilde Buiting, maintains that such an amendment would only conform the law to the current practice among physicians.

"The current guidelines state that there must be actual grave suffering on the part of the newborn," she said, as quoted in Zorgkrant. "In practice, physicians look not only to the actual suffering of the sick newborn, but also to the grave suffering foreseen in the future. This reality should be included in the considerations in adapting the guidelines."

The Groningen Protocol, approved by the Dutch government in 2006, establishes guidelines within which physicians may kill seriously ill newborns.

The Protocol allows doctors to kill newborns who fit into three separate categories: those who are so ill that they are likely to die very soon; those who could survive after "intensive treatment," but "expectations regarding their future condition are very grim," and; those who can survive without any additional medical treatment whatsoever, but are deemed to be experiencing suffering and "for whom a very poor quality of life, associated with sustained suffering, is predicted."

The Dutch government has established a committee to oversee newborn euthanasia, but they have received very few reports of the practice thus far.

Buiting made her comments in response to a statement made last month by Dutch State Secretary for Health, Welfare, and Sports Jet Bussemaker, who expressed concern about the lack of reporting.

Buiting believes that doctors will be more willing to report newborn euthanasia cases if the guidelines are amended to reflect what she says is the current practice among doctors - of killing newborns based upon likely, and not only actual, suffering.

"Given that we in the Netherlands find it important to exercise social control over the active killing of newborns, the guidelines should therefore be adjusted," she said."

Maybe the next step is say it is ethical for the government to kill you based on the anticipated future suffering it intends to inflict upon you!

Slippery slope? What slippery slope? At least no one in North America is advocating infanticide. Except, of course, for Peter Singer:

"For instance, in a 2006 interview Singer was asked point-blank: "Would you kill a disabled baby?" His response? "Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole."

"Many people find this shocking," he continued, "yet they support a woman's right to have an abortion. One point on which I agree with opponents of abortion is that, from the point of view of ethics rather than the law, there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby."

Of course, Singer is just some gun-toting, right-wing weekend militia member from Wisconsin, right? He isn't? Princeton? Teaches bioethics? A chair? Say it isn't so.

The Netherlands is a barbaric, post-Christian wasteland of violence, evil and statist pretentiousness. Maybe Islam taking it over and putting it under Sharia law is no more than it deserves. See Isaiah 8:6-10. God does this sort of things to nations that defy the natural law in spectacular ways; that is the sort of Righteous Judge of all the earth He is. We might want to take that into consideration while the slide down into the culture of death is being greased by fools who do not believe in God.