For all the horror stories we?ve heard about euthanasia in recent years, there are still many people who think of it as ?mercy killing.? Those people need to take a long, hard look at what?s happening in the Netherlands right now. It?s very difficult to find anything merciful about what Dutch doctors are doing to children and infants.

According to Wesley J. Smith in the Daily Standard, Groningen University Hospital in the Netherlands now officially allows doctors to euthanize children under twelve, ?if doctors believe their suffering is intolerable or if they have an incurable illness.? That includes non-fatal illnesses and disabilities. Whether or not the child can consent is irrelevant?what child under twelve would have a clear idea of what he or she was consenting to?

As Smith writes, ?For anyone paying attention to the continuing collapse of medical ethics in the Netherlands, this isn?t at all shocking. . . . Doctors were [already] killing approximately 8 percent of all infants who died each year in the Netherlands. That amounts to approximately eighty to ninety per year. Of these, one-third would have lived more than a month. At least ten to fifteen of these killings involved infants who did not require life-sustaining treatment to stay alive. The study found that a shocking 45 percent of neo-natologists and 31 percent of pediatricians who responded to questionnaires had killed infants.? Smith adds that at least a fifth of the killings were performed without parental consent.

Remember those gruesome statistics the next time someone tries to tell you that euthanasia doesn?t hurt anyone, that it?s just a way of helping people die with dignity. That argument is flawed in itself?because killing destroys a human life created in God?s image. No matter how ?humanitarian? the reason, killing is by definition harmful.

But the harm caused by euthanasia goes beyond that. It inevitably changes our attitude toward all human life. In fact, our attitude toward the weakest members of our society is the real test of how we view life. If we don?t see any inherent value in their lives, we soon and necessarily lose sight of what makes all lives sacred.

Wesley Smith puts it this way: