CHAPTER 6 ACTIVE END-OF-LIFE IN NEWBORN BABIES: FROM TABOO TO CLINICAL REALITY

Abstract

Some dramatic clinical situations, rare yet recurrent such as perinatal asphyxia, open the door to the taboo issue of active ending of life of newborn babies. Law and morals explicitely forbid it, while they both open their arms to the booming neonatal palliative care. Yet this taboo leads to two paradoxes. Some of these babies will die, in due palliative care, despite their parents’ fierce will to support their handicap. Whereas other babies will survive in awful conditions, to the great dismay of their parents and the medical team which are both deprived of the “liberty” of offering death. In these exceptional circumstances, the limit between therapeutic obstinacy, palliative care and active end-of-life is indeed particularly blurred. Through a clinical case, we try to shed light onto these extremely complex ethical questions arising at the very dawn of life.