EDITOR – Dr Terry Gilpin, writing in a daily newspaper on Thurday 13 July, is obviously a very caring medical practitioner who does hospice work with the terminally ill, something I have also assisted with. But what does he mean by saying “legislation permitting euthanasia will do for life at its end what the abortion law has done for life at its beginning”?
Is he also counselling people who are heartbroken over terminating unwanted, unplanned pregnancies, or children who are crying because they don’t have siblings with whom to share their miserable lives and homes, and minimal amounts of food and clothing?
Let us think honestly about what should be done when an unborn’s continued foetal life and future birth and existence are going to cause untold misery and distress to its parent(s), sibling(s), grandparent(s), community and its own sentient self once born.
Its parents may be immature children themselves, needing to finish school and find work and learn to make an income. Mummy may have been on antibiotics so the pill didn’t work, or she may be an overburdened mother of other children already.
Of course mummy and daddy should have been using contraceptives, but even those require a level of effort that may have been beyond the pair, and they may fail. Should someone who can’t find her way to the family planning clinic be allowed to raise and guide other young lives? Will she even find the baby clinics?
Please let us accept that reducing our numbers of under-supported children, by whatever means, is best for our heavily overpopulated world and diminishing resources.
I write as one who has tried to “mentor” a young unhealthy girl and now find myself pouring out my pension to keep her and three equally unhealthy children alive. Having saved their lives a number of times it is hard to stop, but their home is still rat-infested and falling down, and her mother, younger than me and a smoker, doesn’t have the means to maintain it. The government was supposed to renovate the house, but would not accommodate them. Ironically, I was not allowed to house them in a flat that I owned because there were too many of them!
Naomi Wakefield-Stapersma
Durban
