Euthanasia continues to draw significant debates on the morality of ending some one's life or just letting them die by withdrawing or withholding medical interventions. However, physician-assisted death to relieve the patient from unbearable pain, which any medical treatment cannot reverse is permissible. In case given, the child was terminally ill, and the chances of survival were minimum. The suffering had gone for so long, and every intervention to relieve her pain had failed. Despite the child inability to consent to Physician-assisted death, the parents and the attending physician decides that ending her life is the best option. Therefore, it is morally permissible to actively end the child's life rather than letting her go through suffering from an untreatable condition.
When a patient or child has fallen under a persistent and irreversible vegetative state, and death is inevitable regardless of the intervention applied, then an individual is allowed to refuse any treatment intended to sustain a prolonged life full of pain and agony. When death is the only way out of a patient suffering, euthanasia can be performed. The patients need to voluntarily agree to either active or passive euthanasia (Vaughn, 2019; Terri Schiavo’s case, p.648). In some cases, where the patient cannot consent, particularly the children and the unconscious who have suffered from total brain damage and have fallen under vegetative state, parents and next of kin can decide on conducting euthanasia.
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Agreeing with Verhagen's, conducting neonatal euthanasia is morally permissible, especially during strict conditions. However, these strict conditions need to well evaluated so that euthanasia has a valid reason to end a child life. A newborn cannot make voluntary decisions towards euthanasia, and the consent is entirely based on the parents and physician assessments. Therefore, conducting neonatal euthanasia should be for suffering and pain-relieving notably when all other methods have failed. In cases where life-sustaining interventions can reduce the suffering to a manageable level, the child needs to be allowed to fight for their lives until their last breath. By terminating the child life, the physician and parents would voluntarily deny the child a chance to live when there is a possibility of doing so. Therefore, the only justifying condition for neonatal euthanasia is when the child is terminally ill and in severe pain and suffering and all means to sustain their life have failed.
Although under strict conditions, neonatal euthanasia is morally permissible, legalizing it is a slippery slope. Legalizing neonatal euthanasia and given that a child cannot make voluntary euthanasia decisions can bring forth major clinical vices, especially on the wrong termination of child life. The decisions on neonatal euthanasia are solely on parents and guardians and the child physician. When the parent or guardian feels overwhelmed with the child’s medical treatments can ask the physician to end the child life and relieve them that burden. This can result in terminating a child's life that would otherwise survive the illness with major medical interventions.
Additionally, in cases where the child is left with guardians who stand to benefit from the child's death, especially in terms of material gains, they can decide to terminate the child's life before it is due. At times, the child may have higher chances of survival if more medical interventions are applied, but the attending physician, with an agreement with the guardians, would terminate the child's life (Vaughn, 2019; Smith and Jones case, p.654). Nevertheless, instead of legalizing neonatal euthanasia, the health care systems, together with the federal government, need to stipulate the circumstances and which neonatal euthanasia can be validated and the protocol that needs to be followed before arriving at a decision.
References
Vaughn, L. (2019). Bioethics: Principles, Issues, and Cases (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.
