In recent years, the world has been treated to shockingly inhumane episodes, repeated with minor variations but with the same inevitable end whenever they occur: namely, the slow-motion annihilation of human life presided over by the medical establishment. Examples of this horrific spectacle include Alfie Evans in 2018, Charlie Gard in 2017, and even Terry Schiavo in 2005. Except for that last-named victim, however—a 41-year-old American woman whose feeding tube was withdrawn by her husband despite pleas from her parents to let her live—the other cases conform to a frightening model: an infant is born in the UK and the doctors there decide that further treatment is futile.
To that emerging pattern, another tragic example has been added in the case of Indi Gregory, a baby girl born with a rare, incurable mitochondrial disease who nevertheless lived for eight months, displayed signs of improvement, and had doctors in Italy willing and ready to provide her with care. But no: Indi was not whisked away for appropriate medical care; instead, her U.K. doctors decided that there was no hope, and life support was subsequently withdrawn.
The dark days in which panels of experts preside over life and death are not the frightening prospect of a far-away future: they are here. The “hard cases” which elicit public outcry are still at the margins of our society—but these are only hurdles that death clears as it sweeps into the centre of our civilization.
In Canada, death is now offered to the diseased and distressed—our notorious MAiD program still shocks the world. In the United Kingdom, it takes the form of the ancient exposure of infants, now no longer outside of the city walls, but within the confines of our very hospitals. What forms death will take in the years to come are unknown, but this much is certain: the callous disregard for life’s sanctity that is showcased so flagrantly in the brutal practice of prenatal infanticide is no longer confined to life in the womb. We all now share the perils of the unborn; like Baby Indi, we are all now haunted by the specter of medical murder.
