3. Debate: Severely Handicapped Newborns: For Sometimes Letting—and Helping—Die

It is often said that all human life, irrespective of its quality or kind, is equally valuable and that our life-and-death decisions for seriously ill or handicapped infants must not be based on the quality or kind of life in question. As the Protestant theologian Paul Ramsey has put it: [T]here is no reason for saying that [six months in the life of a baby born with the invariably fatal Tay Sachs disease] are a life span of lesser worth to God than living seventy years before the onset of irreversible degeneration.… All our days and years are of equal worth whatever the consequence; death is no more a tragedy at one time than at another time.The view that all human life—irrespective of its quality or kind—has equal worth may well be the simplest answer to the difficult issues raised about the treatment of infants born seriously ill or with major handicaps; but there are two questions that need to be asked about this simple answer.