Belgium euthanizes a teen and suddenly Europe cares about parental notification and ‘choices’
A 17-year old became the first child to be euthanized under Belgian’s euthanasia law which was expanded in 2014 and became law in 2002. What is shocking is that journalists are NOW asking tough questions and Europeans are NOW questioning if this is the right move?!?!
In a post titled “Can a child choose euthanasia?” Euronews writes and then asks: “The Netherlands permits euthanasia for minors from the age of 12. But is a child ever really capable of choosing euthanasia?”
To clarify: Dutch children at age sixteen and older can receive euthanasia without their parents’ consent, and children can be killed by doctors with parental consent starting at age twelve.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Children who cannot enter into legal contracts, get tattooed, or be licensed to drive a car may request—and receive—death.
Euronews notes that “Belgium and the Netherlands only allow for euthanasia in a very narrow and controlled set of circumstances. The vast majority of cases in both countries involve patients with terminal cancer” but asks if “someone under the age of 18 ever be a reasonable judge of whether or not their suffering is unbearable?”
Reality is that these doctors do not care about preservation of life and have widened the guidelines (i.e. Groningen Protocol) on killing a baby:
First Things summarizes that “The protocol permits doctors to administer lethal injections to infants under three scenarios:
- the baby has no chance of survival (a circumstance that is sometimes misdiagnosed);
- the baby “may survive after a period of intensive treatment but expectations for their future are very grim”;
- the baby does “not depend on technology for physiologic stability” but has “suffering [that] is severe, sustained, and cannot be alleviated.”
Once you’ve created a system where you CAN kill something, then you quickly move to WHEN and never re-evaluate if you EVER SHOULD.
Wesley Smith writes: “This means that doctors are lethally injecting not only babies who are dying, but also babies with serious disabilities who do not need intensive care—those who are living what is sometimes called an ‘unlivable life’ by Dutch infanticide apologists.The Groningen Protocol was published without criticism in the New England Journal of Medicine.”
Even the Euronews reports note the rise in killing citizens in Belgium: “Records from the national euthanasia control committee show that, between 2003 and 2013, the number of patients being euthanased in Belgium rose nearly eightfold…The total number is 8,752 cases.”
So, first we had parents getting a permission slip to kill babies who are NOT terminally ill, but may have Down Syndrome or an illness. Now we have Princeton University’s Peter Singer, who believes it should be acceptable kill babies because (in his view) they are not “persons,” coming to the Belgian law’s defense.
Singer believes that children do not attain “full moral status” until “after two years” of age—implying they too could be killed, only asks for mental evaluation and a moral question of killing is ever right or wrong. We only need to make sure they know what they are doing.
I agree with Smith who wrote: “euthanasia proponents see killing and suicide as acceptable answers to human suffering and acceptable means of reducing costs of care. Publicizing the euthanasia of a seventeen-year-old marks the beginning of a campaign to normalize putting dying (and eventually disabled) children to sleep.”
This culture of death is sickening and deplorable.