Pro

“Sam, your newborn son, has been suffocating in your arms for the past 15 minutes. You’re as certain as you can be that he is going to die in the next 15. He was born two days ago with ‘trisomy 18,’ a disease that proved no obstacle to his cementing himself immediately and forevermore as the love of your life…

Sam’s case is classified as one of the worst. His brain cannot regulate his lungs. He grew successfully in your wife’s body and came to term because her blood provided him with oxygen. Now that his mother can no longer breathe for him, there is, the genetic counselor gently tells you, little chance that he will ever breathe on his own…

It seems the medical community has few options to offer parents of newborns likely to die. We can leave our babies on respirators and hope for the best. Or remove the hose and watch the child die a tortured death. Shouldn’t we have another choice? Shouldn’t we be allowed the swift humane option afforded the owners of dogs, a lethal dose of a painkiller?

For years you repress the thought. Then, early one morning, remembering again those last minutes, you realize that the repugnant has become reasonable. The unthinkable has become the right, the good. Painlessly. Quickly. With the assistance of a trained physician.

You should have killed your baby.”

July 12, 2017