Quality of life and the death of "Baby M": a report from Australia.

... While it is no secret that Victorian doctors, like their American counterparts, are frequently making decisions that result in a severely disabled infant's death, they are making these decisions without public guidance, against the backdrop of laws and traditional ethical precepts which uphold in spirit (although, as we shall see, not always in practice) the traditional "sanctity of life" view. It will come as no surprise, therefore, that doctors and parents will occasionally find themselves in a situation where zealous defenders of an infant's "right to life" will turn to the law in an attempt to prevent what they see as immoral and unlawful decisions. This was the case recently in Melbourne, where a severely disabled infant was born on July 14, 1989 and died twelve days later, on July 26.