From the
archives - Published from 1982-96, Fidelity magazine was the predecessor of Culture Wars.
Exposing
Infanticide
by James G. Bruen, Jr.
A Book Review from the January 1985 issue of Fidelity magazine
Death in the
Nursery by James Manney and
John C. Blattner, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Books, 1984, ISBN 0-89283-192-8,
210 pp., $4.95.
Abortion may
be the silent holocaust, but it is not invisible. Newspapers advertise its
availability; feminists tout its necessity; politicians genuflect before this
“reproductive right,” and prolifers express outrage over its legality. Abortion
has divided Americans openly and often bitterly since the liberalization of state
laws in the sixties, but especially since January 22, 1973. Abortion has been a
major issue in the 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns, and the candidates
have been required to take sides and to defend their positions publicly.
Infanticide,
however, is almost invisible. Doctors don’t advertise this service in the
popular press. Except in the unusual case, only the parents and some medical
personnel know, and sometimes, I suspect, even the parents are unaware that
their child has been singled out to die.
The death of
a Down’s syndrome child, Baby Doe, in Bloomington, Indiana in April 1982, and
the ensuing efforts of the Reagan administration to establish a hospital
hotline for the reporting and investigation of nontreatment of handicapped
infants, however, thrust the issue of infanticide upon the public. Since then
media attention has nevertheless waned, and the veil of secrecy has descended
again: even the records in the Baby Doe lawsuit were sealed by the court to
prevent public scrutiny.
The veil,
however, once lifted, could not be drawn as tightly. Baby Jane Doe, a spina
bifida baby who was denied corrective surgery, and the pieces about her by Nat
Hentoff in The Village Voice also drew public attention to the failure
to treat handicapped newborn. And, although Baby Jane Doe is still alive, she
has already left a valuable legacy: on the floor of the House of
Representatives, Ms. Geraldine Ferraro supported the parents’ decision to
withhold treatment, and thus the issue of infanticide, along with the issue of
fetal experimentation, haunted Ms. Ferraro throughout her vice-presidential
campaign.
Regular
readers of the Human Life Review and other prolife publications will be
familiar with much of the content of Death in the Nursery but will still
benefit from the presentation in this book. Those with only a cursory
familiarity with infanticide in the United States will benefit greatly from the
book’s retelling of the stories of children such as Baby Doe and Baby Jane Doe,
from its discussion of the medical, religious, and legal ethics and practices
that allow and encourage infanticide, from its description of the moral
similarities between the acceptance of abortion and the acceptance of
infanticide, and from the questions it asks about attitudes toward the handicapped.
And, while the authors applaud government efforts to obtain information about
nontreatment of the newborn, and while they certainly do not advocate inaction,
they also realize that doctors’ (and society’s) attitudes on the sanctity of
human life are the key. The authors hint that the converging interests of
prolifers and disability-rights activists will perhaps strengthen the demand
that all human life be treated as sacred.
Because
infanticide is often invisible, the authors believe that the government’s “most
effective contribution to the battle to stop infanticide [may be] keeping the
issue under the bright glare of public attention.” Death in the Nursery will
also help keep the issue in the spotlight, and if it aids even a few people to
see more clearly what is happening, it will have served a valuable purpose, for
we must recognize that, like Christ, the handicapped newborn is put to death
because of our sins, not because of his own imperfections.
As the
authors note, however, in referring to Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, M.D.’s
book Whatever Happened to the Human Race, even when a book is “widely
read by Christians and prolife activists,” it still isn’t reaching “the sort of
audience to make the media elite sit up and take note.” Indeed, some people
will take note only on judgment day, but that is not an excuse to avoid trying
to get their attention now; Servant Publications, therefore, has not flinched. Death
in the Nursery is a forthright and readable account of infanticide in the
United States.
James G. Bruen, Jr. is an attorney.
Libido Dominandi:
Sexual Liberation and Political Control by E. Michael Jones. Libido
Dominandi – the term is from St. Augustine’s City of God – is the
definitive history of the sexual revolution, from 1773 to the present. This
book examines the development of technologies like psychotherapy, behaviorism,
advertising, sensitivity training, pornography, and, when push came to shove,
plain old blackmail – that allowed the Enlightenment and its heirs to turn
Augustine’s insight on its head and create masters out of men’s vices. Libido
Dominandi explains how the rhetoric of sexual freedom was used to engineer
a system of covert political and social control. Paperback,
$28.00 + S&H. Read More Read Reviews Order
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