Last night Canada's CBC television network aired Society's Child. Although names were changed, the film, originally released in 2002, takes pains to let the audience know that it is based on a true story of Katie Lynn Baker who had Rett syndrome and was starved to death by her mother in 1996.<br /><br />It's difficult to know why the CBC chose to re-air the film now. Perhaps during the tense weeks of Terry Schiavo's starvation, CBC execs got the idea to insert Canada's very on "feeding-tube-and-starvation" melodrama into the line-up.<br /><br />This film provides the most biased and unapologetic endorsement for killing children with disabilities of any ever produced.It should not and cannot be appropriately be compared with the so-called Nazi euthanasia films of the 1930s, such as Wolfgang Liebeneiner's Ich klage an (I accuse) (1941), which was shown at the War Crimes Trials after World War II. As Liebeniner points out, his film was "rejected as evidence because it had 'nothing to do with the crimes (euthanasia program) on the indictment... The film's purpose was to test whether public opinion would approve of a law sanctioning death on demand with certain medical and legal safeguards." (quote from Liebeniner letter, 1965). This film cannot be compared with Liebeneiner's work because it goes much further openly endorsing the actions of the mother who killed her child, and suggesting that she was merely carrying out the clearly communicated wishes of her daughter, while condemning all those who questioned the right of a mother to kill her child.<br /><br />Make no mistake, the killing of Katie Lynn Baker was an important episode in Canadian History. If Canada goes down the road to euthanasia, the Katie Lynn Baker case may rightly been considered as an important step in decriminalizing homicide of children with disabilities. It is important to remember that the inquest after Katie Lynn Baker's death ruled that she died as a result of homicide but that the BC crown simply decided not to prosecute because "there is no likelihood of conviction" (BC Ministry of the Attorney General, 2 December 1999). This was not based on a lack of evidence of the cause of death or who was responsible, but rather the notion that Canada as a society felt okay about mothers killing their 10-year-old daughters, under the right circumstances. In this case the right circumstances mean "when the child has a severe disability." Of course the made-for-TV drama conveniently leaves out that the death was ruled a homicide. Not surprisingly, they leave out most of the facts that did not fit with their unabashed celebration of the killing of a ten- year-old child. In general, this movie is based on the real case in the same way that a film about America's victory in Viet Nam is based in reality.<br /><br />However, if they have left out the facts they have added lots of delusions to take their place. They take pains to make it clear that this child had a severe physical disability but no cognitive disability and to show her clearly and independently communicating her choice to be starved to death. In fact, no one but her mother claimed that Katie made such a communication. Most experts claimed she was physically and probably mentally unable to make such an independent communication and her primary caregiver claimed that that Katie was communicating and pleading to live, not be killed. Most disturbingly, the film uses a cheap voice over narration device to tell the story from the perspective of the child who is killed. This allows the story to be told celebrating killing as the right thing to do.<br /><br />This device of putting words in the mouth of the victim to celebrate the perpetrator is pretty cheap and might be applied to any homicide victim to provide ringing endorsements of their killers. Perhaps sometime in the future, the CBC will bring us stories narrated by Andera Yates', Clfford Olson's or Paul Bernardo's victims celebrating the people who killed them and revealing that these child killers were really determined and altruistic advocates for children. I hope not. Of course, the CBC could say they are not really endorsing this or they could say that the opinions of Dennis Foon, who wrote this, Buffalo Gal Productions, and Sienna Pictures are not necessarily their opinions just because they ran the film, but that would not be consistent with their program description on their website. They characterize the film as "a story of unconditional love."