Belgium: Senate Approves Measure Allowing Doctors to Euthanize Children
Liberals say Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. It wasn't true 70 years ago and it's not true now.
by Steven Ertelt | Brussels, Belgium | LifeNews.com | 12/12/13 12:56 PM
The Belgian Senate voted today 50-17 to extend euthanasia to children with disabilities, in a move pro-life advocates worldwide had been fearing would come and expand an already much-abused euthanasia law even further.
Of the 17 who voted against the bill, the majority were from the Christian Democrats, a traditionally Catholic political party.
The vote today in the full Senate comes after a Senate committee voted 13-4 to allow minors to seek euthanasia under certain conditions and the measure also would extend the right to request euthanasia to adults with dementia. No age limit would be set, but the children who are euthanized would have “to possess the capacity of discernment.”
Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002 but has, since its enactment, been prohibited for patients under 18. While euthanasia is legal in a handful of countries in Europe, Belgium is the first country in the world to lift all age restrictions on the practice. In 2012, Belgium recorded 1,432 cases of euthanasia – a 25% increase from 2011.
There is still a chance to stop the bill in the House of Representatives, though pro-life campaigners fear it will become law.
 “Currently the Belgian euthanasia law limits euthanasia to people who are at least 18 years old. This unprecedented bill would extend euthanasia to children with disabilities,” says Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. “The Belgian Socialist government is adamant that the euthanasia law needs to extend to minors and people with dementia even though there is significant examples of how the current law is being abused and the bracket creep of acceptable reasons for euthanasia continues to grow. The current practice of euthanasia in Belgium appears to have become an easy way to cover-up medical errors.”
“Regardless of disability, life should be valued. To pass legislation that allows termination of life for people with disabilities who are minors is unacceptable,” he added. “Instead we must make every effort to use the research provided to us to provide attentive care to relieve their physical suffering in a moral way.”
Dr Paul Saba of Physicians for Social Justice, is very concerned about the situation in Belgium.
“They are already euthanising people who are depressed or tired of life because they have taken the interpretations of saying physical and/or psychological suffering – you don’t have to have both, if you have one, why is that not enough? If you are suffering, it’s a personal experience and it would be discriminatory for someone to judge what a person is suffering,” he says. “What this teaches us is that despite the government’s assurances that they will set very strict criteria, that won’t work.”
Testifying in front of Parliament in February, Professor Chris Van Geet of Leuven University asserted that the proposed law poses “ an enormous ethical problem.”Following the vote on Thursday, Tom Mortier, a lecturer in chemistry at Leuven University and an anti-euthanasia campaigner, called the vote “insanity.” Professor Mortier’s own mother, who was suffering from chronic depression at the time, was euthanized in 2012.
“Her departure wasn’t the serene family gathering, full of peace and reconciliation, which euthanasia supporters gush about,” Mortier stated. “The University Hospital in Brussels phoned my wife the day after.”
The leaders of Belgium’s Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities put out a joint statement opposing the vote’s outcome. The statement read, “We mark out opposition to this extension and express our trepidation in the face of the risk of a growing trivialization of such a grave reality.”
There is enormous concern about abuses under the expanded euthanasia law.
Research conducted by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) in 2010 found that 32% of euthanasia deaths in the Flanders region of Belgium occurred without an explicit request.
Meanwhile, according to Schadenberg:
The number of euthanasia deaths in Belgium is skyrocketing with an increase of 25% in 2012. Recent studies indicate that up to 47% of all assisted deaths are not being reported, 32% of all assisted deaths are being done without request and nurses are killing their patients, even though the law restricts euthanasia to doctors.
Some Belgian experts are supporting the extension of euthanasia to children with disabilities because they say that it is being done already. The same medical experts suggest that the extension of euthanasia will result in an increase of 10 to 100 euthanasia deaths each year.
The Belgian euthanasia law appears out-of-control. The Belgian Euthanasia Control and Evaluation Commission appear to be in a conflict of interest. The Commission supported the euthanasia deaths of: Nathan Verhelst (44) who was born as Nancy, Ann G who had Anorexia Nervosa and was sexually exploited by her psychiatrist, Mark & Eddy Verbessem, and at least one depressed woman. These are only the cases that we know about.
Dr Wim Distelmans, who is the leading euthanasia doctor in Belgium has also been the chairman of the Belgium euthanasia commission for more than 10 years, and the commission has been stacked with supporters of the euthanasia lobby.
The Netherlands already allows children over the age of 12 to request euthanasia with the consent of their parents.
lifenews.com
Don't people remember the holocaust began as a mercy killing operation for the disabled?
Euthanasia – the ‘mercy killing’ of disabled people in Germany
At the beginning of World War II the Nazi regime began killing individuals with physical disabilities, people who were mentally retarded, and the terminally ill. The killings were called ‘euthanasia’, i.e. ‘mercy killings’.
According to the Nazi policy of racial hygiene, people with physical and mental disabilities were “useless” in German society, and they were a threat against the Aryan purity. They were deemed unworthy to live.
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Background | | Hitler's authorisation of the Euthanasia Programme (Operation T4) was signed in October 1939, but dated 1 September 1939. |
After Hitler had received a letter from the father of a handicapped child, whom the father wished to be put to death as a mercy killing, the Fuehrer approved the Euthanasia Programme. The idea of the Programme was to “remove” the seriously disabled on a national basis.
The head of the Fuehrer Chancellery, Phillipp Bouhler, became the administrative leader of the Programme, which was code-named ‘Operation T4’ after its headquarters at Tiergarten Strasse 4 in Berlin. The real head of the Operation was Viktor Brack , while the dirty work was dealt with by police inspector Christian Wirth from the criminal police in Stuttgart – the refinement of killing techniques was his specialty.
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Euthanasia and the HolocaustMany historians see Operation T4 as an experimental “rehearsal” before the Final Solution – the extermination of Jews and gypsies. The people involved in Operation T4, approximately 400, became unemployed when the Operation was (temporarily) terminated at the end of 1941. However, most of them were transferred to the newly established concentration- and extermination camps, as ‘experts in the killing of people’. Among them was Christian Wirth, one of the most important men in the practical implementation of Operation Reinhard – the extermination of the Polish Jews.
holocaust-education.dk |
