Missing clue: He's a Pediatric Neurologist

I was puzzled why the governor of Virginia thought nothing of saying if a child was born alive after a late term abortion that he would ask mom before resusitating it or even giving it routine care (i.e. the common practice alas is to put the kid in the cleanup room until it dies of hypothermia... or sometimes are rescued by a feisty nurse who takes it to the nursery and they survive).

The problem is that most of the late term abortions are done for social reasons so encouraging funding of groups to help these moms to carry the kid to term and have it adopted is the way to go.

But after I wrote the stuff below, I read that the governor was a Pediatric Neurologist.

These docs take care of autistic, mentally disabled, cerebral palsy and severe behavioral problems due to brain damage.

and a lot of neurologists get cynical and don't see the value of the lives of the handicapped (I often cite the case of one of our Chippewa patients with frontal lobe syndrome who needed a feeding tube. We had her checked by the neurologist to ask if her outbursts should be treated with medicine, and instead he spent an hour pressuring the family to pull her feeding tube and let her die. The family did not respond because of shyness, but their cousin, a nurse, on the way out told him off: that's the difference between we Indians and you white people. We don't kill our elders)..

Am I accusing him of doing such things? No, but given that he was so clueless on why so many got upset about his support of full term "abortions" including infanticide via neglect, it does make you wonder.

So I suspect the late term abortions he is discussing are not the social ones, but the ones done for things like Spina Bifida/meningomyelocoel, which might not show up on the early ultrasound.

These are "throw away" kids: see my note below about the Oklahoma Children's hospital study, but also the Baby Jane Doe case, where docs persuaded the parents not to treat her, and all the VIPS in NYC and NYTimes hailed the parents for their bravery... the kid however didn't die and did finally get treatment and is alive and well the last time I looked (which was about ten years ago).

so what he was explaining was how he would treat these kids: deliver them early so they will be hopefully born dead, and if they managed to survive, well, after all they weren't wanted by mom, so let them die in the back room.

but then another suspicion came to me.

How many of these kids did he treat in hospitals? And how many were denied ordinary care and died?

Yes, I've seen this too, and suspected it in other cases.

(I could put a long discussion on why not to give extraordinary care here, or treatment that would cause more anguish and pain for a minimal prolonging of life, which in Catholic ethics is optional).

it would be hard to prove, of course: The parents usually go along with the doctor's advice, and wouldn't realize they had an option that would keep their kid alive. And to realize they let the kid die unnecessarily would be something they would not want to face, especially since often the ambivalent feelings about the child would induce more guilty feelings.

Sigh.