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Second of three parts; (click here to read part 1)

Pellegrino has followed the legalization of PAS in the Netherlands because he sees it as a "living laboratory of what happens when a society accepts the legitimacy of PAS. You've got direct, empirical evidence." And there Pellegrino has found that "the reports of the Dutch government and the Dutch Medical Society provide ample evidence that the slippery slope is no myth but a reality."

In its Remmelink report, the Dutch government documented that 1,000 persons were killed without giving consent in what was supposed to be a "voluntary" program. And "there is nothing in the second Dutch report [released in 1995] to suggest that this is not still occurring." In fact, the second report explained that the eligibility for PAS had been extended from terminally ill patients to include children, severely depressed patients, and elderly persons who weren't satisfied with the quality of their lives.

"The Netherlands experience shows that euthanasia cannot be contained by regulation and that most advocates reason that it would be 'merciful' to extend it here and there in individual cases," Pellegrino explains. "Any time we deem any human life as of unacceptable quality—the infant with cerebral damage, the retarded, the chronically and terminally ill—we make that life a target for 'merciful destruction' and accelerate the slide down the slippery slope to involuntary euthanasia."

A particularly chilling example of such "desensitization" exhibited itself when Pellegrino talked with a physician from the Netherlands. "How does it feel to do euthanasia?" he asked the euthanasiast.

"It's hard the first time," the doctor responded.

The lawyer: Advocate for the disabled
When Robert Destro went to work for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, he began focusing almost full-time on cases involving treatment given to the disabled. One in particular jolted his conscience. A young California boy with Down syndrome needed a heart operation, but the boy's father wanted to withhold treatment. Why fix the heart valve? the father asked. The boy was retarded.

Destro was outraged. "Are we going to stand by and watch this child die of medical neglect simply because he's retarded?" he asked.

Unbelievably, the state of California sided with the boy's father. Destro was shaken by the "amazing ignorance with respect to the reality of people who live with disabilities.

"From that moment on, I could see the progression of cases coming," Destro remembers.

The issue for Destro has always been "On what grounds will we deny basic rights to people with disabilities?"

In the Baby Doe case, the answer was couched in euphemisms such as "parental rights." But it was obvious to Destro that such arguments "always seem to favor the people who are young, beautiful, and flawless. Euphemisms provide cover for behavior which is not yet socially acceptable. It would not be socially or politically correct to argue that parents have a right to starve or deny necessary treatment to a child simply because he or she is retarded or has a physical disability, so they avoid the issue. 'Parental rights' is as good a cover as any."

What concerns Destro is the acceptance of a "hierarchy of disabilities," with mental disabilities at the bottom, and blindness and deafness at the top. The latter are seen as severe inconveniences, but the former are too often perceived as rendering the person who has them less "dignified" simply because they are dependent upon others for their care. The Australian bioethicist Peter Singer went so far as to question the humanity of the mentally disabled, arguing that since dogs and pigs are more intelligent than newborn babies, infanticide should be permitted whenever it is clear that the baby will never function as a "full" ("Whatever that means," Destro adds) human being.

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June 16 1997, Vol. 41, No. 7