The Church of England has broken with tradition dogma by calling for doctors to be allowed to let sick newborn babies die.
Christians have long argued that life should preserved at all costs - but a bishop representing the national church has now sparked controversy by arguing that there are occasions when it is compassionate to leave a severely disabled child to die.
And the Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler, who is the vice chair of the Church of England’s Mission and Public Affairs Council, has also argued that the high financial cost of keeping desperately ill babies alive should be a factor in life or death decisions.
I get that this guy isn’t advocating infanticide, but I believe that buying into his line of thinking leads us on a slippery slope to legalized infanticide. After all, when we’re saying “It’s too hard to keep these babies alive so let’s just let them die” how long until we’re at “If we’re going to let these babies die, let’s go ahead and give them a shot to end their misery a bit quicker”?
And who gets to set the criteria for which babies will be “allowed to die” and which will be the recipients of efforts to save its life? If we’re factoring in financial considerations, will poor parents who have a child that has some mild though costly disability (say Downs syndrome) be allowed let their child die (or put the kid “out of his/her misery” in a super late-term abortion?
Plus, what does it say about our society when we quit trying to save lives in extraordinary circumstances? I don’t think I want to live in a society where we give up rather than do all we can to preserve innocent life.