The Slippery Slope

We were watching Law & Order - an episode where a mother had killed her baby after learning that her child would unavoidably and painfully die within 5 years. The prosecution and the police had their moral dillema - should euthanasia be tried as murder, especially in a case like this?

Almost out of hand, the question was dismissed as a "Slippery Slope". If you allowed mothers to kill their terminally ill children, what about terminally ill adults? Who makes the decision when their are no parents . . . the State? What keeps us from Logan's Run?

The Slippery Slope disturbs me - it strikes me as an empty argument, motivated by timidity or laziness, or perhaps both. We force a child to experience four years of horrific pain and suffering because we're afraid no-one has the spine to stop Them from retiring us at age 26? Mercy is the hole in the dam of law, and we have to plug it before it becomes precedent and every child-killer can skate?

Discretion is the antidote to the Slippery Slope, not Draconianism. If justice or morals or ethics were a machine, we may need to be digital and consider every offense as such, regardless of motive or circumstance. But we are analog, and we recognize shades of gray. If this mother killed her child to save her pain and agony, we should be able to evaluate her situation in that light without having to apply the same results to the mother who kills her child because she's inconvenient or out of insanity.

Am I missing something? Is the situation much more complex than I'm making it out to be? Probably. But leave me a comment and let me know!