Euthanasia and eugenics

“on could suggest that the practice of euthanasia on newborns was the missing link between eugenics and euthanasia. What remained a constant in the progression from birth control, to sterilization, to infanticide was not only the will to control birth but, more specifically, to remove from existence certain forms of incurable social suffering.. . . The problem of death control was closely linked to the problem of birth control. . . . The case of the dying, like that of the mentally retarded and the physically handicapped, involved a very specific kind of suffering . . . that was located in the social body as much as the individual’s body” (i.e., the suffering of family, friends, bystanders, and the physician) (Lavi, 109-111).