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Newborns should have the right to die, ethicist says

It is not an easy subject but in the wider debate about end-of-life care, some believe infants and newborns with severe terminal conditions should be part of Canada's end-of-life conversation. Critics argue euthanasia for newborns should not be an option since one can never be certain conditions won't improve....
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The Current22:00Newborns should have the right to die, ethicist says - Dec 9, 2014
It is not an easy subject but in the wider debate about end-of-life care, some believe infants and newborns with severe terminal conditions should be part of Canada's end-of-life conversation. Critics argue euthanasia for newborns should not be an option since one can never be certain conditions won't improve.

The difficult decision is whether you want this infant to live or not. Once you've made that decision, it should be permissible to make sure that baby dies swiftly and humanely.Peter Singer, philosopher, making the case for euthanizing infants with severe, terminal conditions

There's an intense debate happening across Canada today about end-of-life care, and end-of-life decisions. We've taken on a few aspects of the debate so far this season on The Current, and these are always difficult discussions. But there may be no more difficult an end-of-life conundrum to consider than the one that comes so close to the very beginning of life.

That's where the conversation about end-of-life takes us today, to newborn babies, born with severe, terminal conditions.

  • Lynn Grandmaison Dumond is an advanced practice nurse with the palliative care team at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and Roger's House -- a palliative residential hospice.

  • Udo Schuklenk is a professor of philosophy and the Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics at Queen's University. He's also the author of a recent academic paper that defended a moral argument for the euthanasia of some infants with severe, terminal conditions.

  • Dr. Stephen Liben is the director of pediatric palliative care at the Montreal Children's Hospital.


What do you think about bringing newborns into the end-of-life debate? Do you agree or disagree with the argument for euthanasia of terminal newborns?

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This segment was produced by The Current's Shannon Higgins and Marc Apollonio.

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