Here’s today’s COMMENT FROM AN OLD FART: AP reported in the story, Belgium considering unprecedented law to grant euthanasia for children, dementia patients:
Should children have the right to ask for their own deaths?
In Belgium, where euthanasia is now legal for people over the age of 18, the government is considering extending it to children — something that no other country has done. The same bill would offer the right to die to adults with early dementia.
Advocates argue that euthanasia for children, with the consent of their parents, is necessary to give families an option in a desperately painful situation. But opponents have questioned whether children can reasonably decide to end their own lives.
Belgium is already a euthanasia pioneer; it legalized the practice for adults in 2002. In the last decade, the number of reported cases per year has risen from 235 deaths in 2003 to 1,432 in 2012, the last year for which statistics are available. Doctors typically give patients a powerful sedative before injecting another drug to stop their heart.
Only a few countries have legalized euthanasia or anything approaching it.
In the Netherlands, euthanasia is legal under specific circumstances and for children over the age of 12 with parental consent. (There is an understanding that infants, too, can be euthanized, and that doctors will not be prosecuted if they act appropriately.) Elsewhere in Europe, euthanasia is only legal in Luxembourg. Assisted suicide, where doctors help patients to die but do not actively kill them, is allowed in Switzerland.
In the U.S., the state of Oregon grants assisted suicide requests for residents aged 18 or over with a terminal illness. Assisted suicide also is allowed in the states of Washington, Vermont and Montana.
In Belgium, the ruling Socialist party has proposed the bill expanding the right of euthanasia. The Christian Democratic Flemish party vowed to oppose the legislation and to challenge it in the European Court of Human Rights, if it passes. A final decision must be approved by Parliament and could take months.
In the meantime, the Senate has heard testimony on both sides of the issue.
“It is strange that minors are considered legally incompetent in key areas, such as getting married, but might (be able) to decide to die,” Catholic Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard testified.
Leonard said alternatives like palliative sedation make euthanasia unnecessary — and relieves doctors of the burden of having to kill patients. In palliative sedation, patients are sedated and life-sustaining support is withdrawn so they starve to death; the process can take days.
But the debate has extended to medical ethicists and professionals far from Belgium.
Charles Fostr, who teaches medical law and ethics at Oxford University, believes children couldn’t possibly have the capacity to make an informed decision about euthanasia since even adults struggle with the concept.
“It often happens that when people get into the circumstances they had so feared earlier, they manage to cling on all the more,” he said. “Children, like everyone else, may not be able to anticipate how much they will value their lives if they were not killed….”http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/belgium-considering-unprecedented-law-to-grant-euthanasia-for-children-dementia-patients/2013/10/31/67fd55be-4200-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html?wpisrc
Really, children are going to have the sufficient capacity to choose to end their lives?
Here is a bit about Belgium from Europedia in the web post, Why is it so special to turn 18 in Belgium ?
18 years old is the age of majority in most Western countries (apart from some Canadian or US states where it is 19 or 21). In Asian countries it is usually 20 (Japan, Thailand) or 21 (Malaysia, Singapore). This makes it special in itself, because it means that someone has reached the official threshold of adulthood, which means that they are free to act without their parents’ consent, sign contracts (e.g. job) by themselves, vote at elections…
But in Belgium, turning 18 means much more than that.
Like in the rest of Europe (except UK and Ireland), but contrarily to the USA, 18 is also the legal age to obtain a driving licence.
Belgium being one of the rare countries with compulsory voting at elections, 18 does not only become the age when one can vote, but when one must vote (if elections are held that year, but chances are quite high with all the levels of government in Belgium).
Belgium is also one of the few countries to have compulsory education until the age of 18. So not only do 18-year-olds become “free” from the the tutoring of their parents, but also free to quit school if they want.
One major difference with other countries is that criminal responsibility (different from the legal responsibility conferred by majority) in Belgium is also set at 18 years old, contrarily to the vast majority of countries around the world where it is almost always lower (as young as 6 years old in some US states). This means that if a 17-year old Belgian kills someone, commit a arson or robbery, etc., he or she is not considered responsible of their acts, and thus cannot be sentenced by a criminal court, and will usually be purely and simply acquitted. I personally think that this is abusive and the age should be set around 14 or 15, if not lower.
18 used to be the age for compulsory military service for men, but this was abolished in the early 1990’s.
There are a few legal rights which do not coincide with the age of 18 thanks to Belgium’s permissive laws, such as the right to buy or drink alcohol (no legal age), buy tobacco (16 years old, although there is no legal age for smoking), or have a bank card (12 years old). The legal age of sexual consent and marriage is 16 both for boys and girls.
In brief, the age of 18 in Belgium is synonymous with :
– legal adulthood/majority
– legal responsibility
– criminal responsibility
– right and obligation to vote
– right to be elected (except for Senate)
– legal age for driving
– minimum age to stop schoolThe bold indicate what makes 18 very special in Belgium compared to the rest of the world, and especially the rest of Europe.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/24245-Why-is-it-so-special-to-turn-18-in-Belgium
So, if one is not legally responsible until they are 18, why would Belgium ever consider giving a child a right to end their own life? Even more sinister why would Belgium even give parents or caretakers the right to end a life which may have become burdensome to them.
The quality of life means different things to different people. Should Stephen Hawking be killed because he has a disease?
Stephen Hawking is the former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and author of A Brief History of Time which was an international bestseller. Now Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge, his other books for the general reader include A Briefer History of Time, the essay collection Black Holes and Baby Universe and The Universe in a Nutshell.
In 1963, Hawking contracted motor neurone disease and was given two years to live. Yet he went on to Cambridge to become a brilliant researcher and Professorial Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. From 1979 to 2009 he held the post of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, the chair held by Isaac Newton in 1663. Professor Hawking has over a dozen honorary degrees and was awarded the CBE in 1982. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Science. Stephen Hawking is regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Einstein…. http://www.hawking.org.uk/
The issue in Belgium is one of respect for life and whether that respect is accorded even when a life becomes inconvenient or difficult.
David H. Roper of Our Daily Bread gives us something to chew on in Respect For Life:
In Psalm 139, David describes God as fashioning his tiny body together in the darkness of his mother’s womb. God loved David before he ever existed.
God designed the person David was to be, and He brought that person into being according to His predetermined plan. In this psalm, David used the intriguing metaphor of a journal in which God first wrote His plan and then brought that plan into fruition through His handiwork in the womb: “Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written” (v.16).
Put another way, David was shaped by his heavenly Father’s love into a unique creation. He came from the inventive heart and hand of God. What was true of David is true of you. You are special—along with everyone else in the world.
This being true, we must be pro-life in the purest sense of the word. We are to respect and cherish all human life: the born and those still in the womb; winsome children and weary seniors; the wealthy executive and the financially destitute. All persons are unique productions of our Creator’s genius. With David, let’s exclaim: “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (139:14).
By God’s wise designing We are wonderfully made, Every part essential And in perfect balance laid. —Anon. All life is created by God and bears His autograph. http://odb.org/2010/01/17/respect-for-life/
In this instance, moi thinks the following quote is appropriate:
“I think we might be going a bridge too far.”
Lt. General Frederick “Boy” Browning (1896-1965)
British military officer
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