A new research paper revealed that approximately 94% of neonatologists and other similar medical professionals surveyed in Flanders, Belgium “agree that in the event of a serious (non-lethal) neonatal condition, administering drugs with the explicit intention to end neonatal life is acceptable.” Neonatal, for those unaware, refers to what happens following birth. These doctors are saying that it is acceptable to kill a baby with a disability AFTER BIRTH. This is a continuation of a trend where killing babies after birth, especially babies with disabilities, is viewed as acceptable.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam very controversially defended a 2019 state bill that, if passed, would have allowed a doctor to deny care to a born baby. He said, if an undesired baby was born, “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” In response to backlash, Governor Northam’s communications director issued a “clarifying” statement on his behalf saying, “No woman seeks a third trimester abortion except in the case of tragic or difficult circumstances, such as a nonviable pregnancy or in the event of severe fetal abnormalities, and the governor’s comments were limited to actions physicians would take in the event that a woman in those circumstances went into labor.” The fact that “severe fetal abnormalities” were mentioned in his defense is indicative of a bias against the birth and lives of people with disabilities.
It is interesting to me that Belgium should be the subject of this study and a country that unabashedly continues an ugly push towards modern-day eugenics. My grandmother’s cousin died in Belgium as a young man. He perished in the Battle of the Bulge, which was part of the Allied offensive towards the end of World War II to rid the world of the scourge of Nazism.
Among all of the horrible things that the Nazis did, they perpetrated their first crimes against people with disabilities. The opening act of the Holocaust was a program called Aktion T-4, which was a large-scale government initiative targeting people with physical and mental disabilities. Under this system, every time a child was born, an official would fill out a form that listed every physical or mental defect the child may have. That form would be sent to three doctors who would, without seeing the child beforehand, then put a cross on the form if they believed the child should be killed. Two out of three crosses, and the child would be sent to a “hospital” where they were put to death. Not all of those killed were children, but around half were. We now know that between 90,000 and 300,000 people lost their lives to this evil project. While Aktion T-4 officially ceased operating in August 1941, Hitler simply rolled it into the overarching event of the Holocaust.
This is the history of the Nazis and these are the disgusting crimes that brave individuals fought and died to stand up against, including in Belgium. With variations in form, this is the same practice that Belgian doctors are today saying is perfectly acceptable. This is sickening and absolutely offensive to the memory of those who died liberating countries like Belgium, including my grandmother's cousin, from these eugenics-celebrating monsters. The ideological underpinning that allowed for many thousands of people to be summarily executed, for no other reason than the fact that they functioned differently than most people, continues within the medical community.