There’s a chilling new study in the medical journal Lancet on euthanasia’s impact on babies in Belgium:

Nearly half the newborn babies who died in Flanders over a recent year-long period were helped to die by their doctors, a new study reported yesterday. Paediatricians in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium either discreetly stopped treating the babies or, in 17 cases, illegally killed them with lethal doses of painkillers.

The study, published in The Lancet, examined the deaths of every baby who died within a year of birth in Flanders between August 1999 and July 2000. The results of a survey on the causes of death were stark: paediatricians who responded to the survey admitted they had taken “end of life” decisions in more than half the cases. Most commonly, that involved withholding or withdrawing treatment because physicians believed the baby had no real chance of survival or the baby had no chance of a “bearable future”.

In 40 cases, opiate pain killers were used in doses with a potentially life-shortening affect. In 17 cases, a lethal dose or lethal drugs were administered. Overall, the research yielded information on 253 out of the total of 298 infant deaths in the region over the period. The lethal doses of painkillers, which broke Belgian law, were mainly administered to babies less than a week old.

Most were premature babies with severe congenital malformations or handicaps and what was described as a poor quality of life, or very premature babies with severe brain damage. Four fifths of the doctors who completed an “attitudinal survey” agreed that “the task of the physician sometimes involves the prevention of unnecessary suffering by hastening death”.

Update: A poster named “BVW” at the FreeRepublic has appropriately rewritten the famous war poem “In Flanders’ Fields” in memory of the newborn victims of so-called mercy killings.

In Flanders’ fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses bike paths, row on row,

That mark our place: and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns sony walkmans below.

We are the dead babes. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved,A burden discarded and now we lie

In Flanders’ fields.

As I say: Chilling.