By Dave Andrusko
As widely feared, the Belgian Senate approved a bill today that would allow euthanasia for children. The vote was not close-50-17.
All that stands between final enactment is a vote in the House and then the King’s signature, which is a formality. Socialist MP Karine Lalieux told Reuters, “We want this law to be passed before the dissolution of parliament.”
“Currently the Belgian euthanasia law limits euthanasia to people who are at least 18 years old,” says Alex Schadenberg, executive director 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.”
In 2002 Belgium introduced euthanasia for those aged 18 and over. Since then, Belgium has seen a nearly 500% increase in deaths by euthanasia.
If the new proposal becomes law, Belgium would be following, as it so often has, in the footsteps of neighbor Netherlands which allows “mercy killing” for children over 12.
The die was pretty much cast last month when the Senate justice and social affairs committee approved a draft bill 13-4 which included the obligatory, but meaningless “stringent guidelines” (in terminal a condition, competent, in unbearable pain, without prospects of improvement, parental consent, etc., etc., etc.)
Likewise euthanizing children was described more as a matter of “principle” (!)—“that very few children would ever choose euthanasia but that the law now discriminates against them,” as Dr. Kenneth Chambarae, an ardent proponent, told CNN.
Nirj Deva, a founding member of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, told ZENIT news service last week that “all Belgians ought to be terrified by the implications of this proposed law.”
“The irony of human history shows that when we start deciding which human lives are worthy of living, the moment inevitably comes when someone else makes that decision for us,” he warned. Deva added that he believed the proposed law is the “skeletal face of healthcare rationing, disguised by a mask of false mercy and compassion.”
In a commentary reprinted last month at National Right to Life News Today, Dr. Peter Saunders wrote
“It is widely acknowledged that euthanasia is out of control in Belgium: a 500% increase in cases in ten years; one third involuntary; half not reported; euthanasia for blindness, anorexia and botched sex change operations; organ transplant euthanasia; plans to extend euthanasia to children and people with dementia.
One commentator has said that Belgium has ‘leaped head-first off a moral cliff’.
“Belgium’s law, which came into effect in 2002, permits euthanasia for those in a ‘medically hopeless’ situation due to a serious and incurable condition caused by injury or illness, with physical and/or psychological suffering which is constant and unbearable, and cannot be mitigated.
“But it is clear that in practice the boundaries are continually migrating and the nation’s moral conscience is shifting year on year. Call it incremental extension, mission creep or slippery slope – whatever – it is strongly in evidence in Belgium.”