I'm questioning the burden on the caregivers, presumably hospitals, the suffering of those who watch the baby suffer before it dies, and of course the suffering of the baby itself, which we can only hope will have a mercifully short life.
The daughter of a close friend works in the neonatal unit at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. She is young enough that she can and will talk about what she sees very honestly and descriptively, because she herself is still struggling with what she is witnessing.
Parkland is an enormous facility, and the neonatal unit has 75 beds. Her stories of the families of seriously deformed children are heartwrenching-- the death watches, the agony of the child, the guilt of the parents. She is religious, but she says she is finding that her views are changing because of what she sees.
In a way, these decisions are the product, just as the decision about Terri Shiavo is, of technical advances that have moved faster than the moral conflicts can be fully considered. |
