(...)  The Groningen Protocol is the proposal of doctors in the Netherlands for the establishment of an "independent committee" charged with selecting babies and other severely handicapped or disabled people for euthanasia. The original article provides some of the key details:

(...)  Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12.

He goes on to say:

(...)  When News of the Groningen Protocol surfaced in October, it was reported in the Grand Forks Herald, though I didn't read of it, nor apparently did many others. The Groningen Protocol could have been the stuff of a fine presidential debate question, or a series of questions, but I doubt if any of the debate moderators or either of the presidential candidates had heard of it either.

(...)  The hospital, beyond confirming the protocol in general terms, refused to discuss its details.

(...)   "It is for very sad cases," said a hospital spokesman, who declined to be identified. "After years of discussions, we made our own protocol to cover the small number of infants born with such severe disabilities that doctors can see they have extreme pain and no hope for life. Our estimate is that it will not be used but 10 to 15 times a year."

(...)   A parent's role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent's wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must be professional, so rests with doctors.

As reported in apnews.myway.com the hospital revealed last month that it had already carried out four such mercy killings in 2003, and reported all cases to government prosecutors. There have been no legal proceedings against the hospital or the doctors. Roman Catholic organizations and the Vatican have reacted with outrage to the announcement, and U.S. euthanasia opponents contend the proposal shows the Dutch have lost their moral compass.

I can remember back years ago, although I can't recall when I first heard it said, but it seems that many have speculated that abortion would lead to euthanasia, and here we have a country in which abortion is common - and it has been followed by child euthanasia which remains illegal everywhere.

In the same apnews.myway.com article we find that:

According to the Justice Ministry, four cases of child euthanasia were reported to prosecutors in 2003. Two were reported in 2002, seven in 2001 and five in 2000. All the cases in 2003 were reported by Groningen, but some of the cases in other years were from other hospitals.

Since the introduction of the Dutch law, Belgium has also legalized euthanasia, while in France, legislation to allow doctor-assisted suicide is currently under debate. In the United States, the state of Oregon is alone in allowing physician-assisted suicide, but this is under constant legal challenge.

I could probably rant for days and spend hours on research and posts in efforts to express my dismay and frustrations over the Groningen Protocol, but fortunately Hugh Hewitt has encapsulated these frustrations for all of us in his summary to his article:

Incredibly, the nation's elite media has turned a collective blind eye to this story, though the Los Angeles Times did, on the day following the Drudge headline, find time to put on the paper's front page, above the fold, the story that Salmon and Steelhead May Lose Protection, but not a column inch of ink for a radical leap past Kevorkian land into the regions of Mengele.>

LAST WEEK I marveled at the casual manner with which the Target Corporation announced that the Salvation Army could no longer place its kettles and ring its bells outside the giant retailer's 1,500+ stores. It was a callous and Scrooge-like act, one that I and thousands of others found sufficiently appalling as to oblige us not to shop at the store this season. I noted the irony of a retailer grown fat on Christmas gift sales tossing the charity most closely aligned with the public's image of Christmas spirit.

How foolish to imagine that actions such as Target's would offend greatly when protocol's such as Groningen's pass without comment before the eyes of editorialists and talking heads. Four years into the new century, and one can only guess where it will end. I do not think it is safe to bet that these next 96 years will be less bloody that the years 1905 to 1999.

Earl at Life Matters had an interesting closing comment for his post on the Groningen Protocol:

The Hollanders were the victims of the German occupation during the Nazi tyranny of the Twentieth Century. Now, the Netherlands is a victimizer nation, implementing the anti-life protocols of the TAB tyranny of the Twenty-First.<

Tragically, their own infants among the most defenseless victims of the Culture of Death, as it "turns yet another blood-stained page in its long and malevolent history. The Allies liberated Holland in 1945. Who will free the victims of today's crimes against humanity in the Netherlands?

Unfortunately, 44,556,889 (and counting continues) babies have been aborted in the U.S. since January 2, 1973. Are we headed for a Groningen-type Protocol here in our country? Click here to view images of aborted babies (murdered little human beings). Are adults next? Where does it stop?

Read all of what Professor Steven Bainbridge, a law professor at UCLA has to say about the Groningen Protocol at ProfessorBainbridge.com .  Professor Bainbridge is an adult Catholic convert and includes:

On November 12, the Catholic News Agency reported:

Receiving participants in the international conference on palliative cures at the Vatican this morning, Pope John Paul II issued strong words against the practice of euthanasia as a means to alleviate suffering, saying it is "motivated by sentiments of a poorly understood compassion" and that it "supresses" rather than redeems the person from suffering. ...

The Pope underscored that administering painkillers "must be proportional to the intensity and cure of pain, avoiding every form of euthanasia" by giving a quantity of medicine that would cause death.

Doubtless I'm missing something. Until somebody explains what I'm missing by reference to clear teaching in the Magisterium, however, I will maintain that the analogy to Nazi doctors is entirely apt.

I agree with the analogy expressed by Professor Bainbridge and in inference by Hugh Hewitt. The participants at the Wannsee Conference  would be most proud of the Dutch, some of the very people who suffered so much at the hands of the Nazis.