In 1971, I began a six week clinical rotation as a nursing student at Agnews State Hospital at the Rampart Building. That building was six floors of birth defect babies that in today's world are usually aborted. Many of their problems are not detectable by ultrasound until the fifth month or so. In the 70s, there was no way of knowing--birth was more of a crap shoot.
That experience changed my outlook forever. I became and have remained an advocate of euthanasia.
I also learned the how and why many people get into thinking the preservation of these babies is a form of sainthood. I think that as usual, these decisions are being made without considering all the unintended consequences.
Those six weeks at Rampart were like living in the Twilight Zone for 8 hours a day. I have no pictures and do not know where I would find them, but they would be your worst nightmare. The reason many legends exist is that because there is some reality in fact.
There are children born who had some inutero problem that stopped their evolutionary process. They can be born looking like a fish or pig. I was told in the old days, they were deliberately suffocated. I would consider this humane. Otherwise, some take years to die.
This is also very expensive. At the time I was there, it was four patients to every RN because these patients require extensive care. There are many nurses who loved these jobs. It is quiet. It is routine. There are no surprises. A lot of people convince themselves that this is god's work--caring for these rejects. I use that term because all of these patients were rejected by their parents at birth and turned over to the state.
One of the patient's I had that I can never forget was a boy baby(I use this term generously) whose body was about 15 inches and head was about 24 inches in diameter not circumference. He was about two. They said he had an IQ of 2. He did not swallow correctly enough to take a bottle. His parents refused a feeding tube so he was kept alive by holding his nose which made him open his mouth and a special pablum was inserted with an eyedropper. This took place for three minutes every hour. While I was on duty--his heart stopped. They Resuscitated him!!!!! I have never gotten over that.
I admit there must be something wrong with me because from then on I considered him an IT. I no longer consider these poor things human. To be human you have to have a certain intelligence level. If we are free to take a monkey's life to experiment on behalf of medical science and that monkey has more sentience than these creatures, something is drastically wrong.
My criteria of humanity is how much sentience. Not how much life. Cancer cells are living. Chemo is choosing one life form over another. The question no one wants to answer neither for the infant or the infirm is how much sentience exists. It is a tough question. Not response to stimulus like any amoeba but an ability to process pain, breathing, etc.
In those days, we also had hundreds of ranches and farms of orphans. Most of the Shirley Temple movies are about orphanages in the thirties. Newt made a speech about how well he thought these kids lived then and that ending abortion and producing these kind of work trained kids would benefit America.
Seems so simple. Reagan removed much of Agnews and Sonoma State Hospitals where these kids were wherehoused which encourage doctors to reccommend more and more of these types of children to be aborted when they were detected.
NOW WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH THEM AND WHO WILL PAY FOR IT?
I am screaming because that is how bad the memory is. In the 70s, it cost over a hundred thousand dollars a year to maintain one of these children. Now with advances in medicine, it could be a full lifetime.
So go ahead and flame away but ask yourself would you want the job? Who would you resuscitate?