The Belgium Parliament building

YESTERDAY, as has been widely reported, Belgium became the first nation in the world to allow euthanasia for terminally ill children of any age. Children, who aren’t typically trusted with decisions on far less weighty matters,, are expected to be fully cognizant of what they are requesting in approved cases. The law is the latest measure advanced by the aggressive right-to-die movement in the formerly Roman Catholic country. Western society is so saturated with a death wish that even little children under expert care with all kinds of pain medications are not exempt. As Wesley Smith of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, remarked, “Treating a child like a sick horse is what passes for ‘compassion’ these days.”  Smith has documented some of the abuses of “euthanasia” in Belgium. He said the child euthanasia bill was unsurprising: “Once killing is accepted as an answer to human difficulty and suffering, the power of sheer logic dictates that there is no bottom.”

The measure has deflected attention from the more pressing issue — and one can’t help but suspect that distraction is intentional. Most often euthanasia does not concern the young. It concerns the old. With this type of decline in the abhorrence toward voluntary death, the old are the ones most likely to feel the pressures to end their lives.

Here is an interview at CNN with a Belgium woman who supported the new law, and it gives a powerful glimpse into the Belgium people, whose problem appears to be not too much suffering but too little:

Mother Linda van Roy, from Schilde, Belgium, [was] among those backing the bill.

She could do nothing to help her terminally ill baby, Ella-Louise, in the last hours of her life.

Ella-Louise, who was 10 months old when she died just over two years ago, would never have qualified for euthanasia.

But her mother had to watch as her baby — who had Krabbe disease, a rare and terminal genetic mutation that damages the nervous system — slowly faded away under palliative sedation, food and liquid withheld so her suffering was not further prolonged.

[…]

“That whole period of sedation, you always need to give more and more medication, and you start asking questions. And you say, ‘What’s the use of keeping this baby alive?’ ” van Roy said.

She wishes she could have administered a fatal dose of medication to make the end of her daughter’s short life come more quickly.

That’s why she’s campaigning for a change to Belgium’s euthanasia laws, to give the choice of ending their suffering to older children whose bodies are wracked with pain.

Ironically, there are more palliative options for children with pain than ever before. There has been no clamor by doctors for “euthanasia” in Belgium. From CNN:

However, 175 pediatricians signed an open letter Thursday urging more time for reflection before any decision is made.

The letter argues that the law “responds to no real demand” and that most medical teams caring for terminally ill children would recognize that none of their patients has made a spontaneous and voluntary demand for euthanasia.

Meanwhile, medical advances mean that effective palliative care is available and that children do not suffer as they approach death. Extending the “right to die” to minors will only add to the stress and pain of families at a difficult time, it said.

The letter also questions how any objective judgment can be made on a child’s ability to understand what’s at stake.

The political process has created a “false impression” that a change to the law is urgently needed — but in reality “the situation in our country is far from being dramatic,” the doctors say.

Others also question whether children have the capacity to take this most final of decisions for themselves.

Palliative nurse Sonja Develter, who specializes in end-of-life care for children, told CNN she is concerned that giving children a choice would mean they made decisions based on what they thought their families wanted to hear, and that it would be a terrible strain for children who may already feel they are a burden to their caregivers

In Belgium, adults may request assisted suicide if they are experiencing physical or mental suffering; they needn’t be suffering from a terminal disease. For instance, a quadriplegic can request help ending his life. And in Europe at large, the voluntary death movement has been growing. Here is a good piece on the general issue at the Center for Bioethics and Culture, which states:

The history of the last forty years shows unequivocally that a society which permits or legalizes euthanasia and assisted suicide for the few, embarks on a path leading inexorably to permissive mercy killing of the many. For example, in the Netherlands, not only may the terminally ill be euthanized on request, but so also may people with serious chronic illnesses and serious disabilities. Strong political advocacy now exists there to permit senior citizens who are “tired of life” to receive suicide as the remedy.

Worse, according to several government studies, hundreds of patients who haven’t asked for euthanasia are lethally injected or intentionally overdosed with pain medication each year by Dutch doctors. A Dutch Supreme Court ruled that a psychiatrist, who assisted the suicide of a woman in grief over her dead children, had not acted wrongly because suffering is suffering, and it doesn’t matter whether it is physical or emotional. The “Groningen Protocol,” an infanticide checklist, has been published by doctors who admit euthanizing dying and disabled infants, and even though such killings are murder under Dutch law, nothing is done about it.

[…]

In Belgium, where euthanasia has only been elected for a few years, studies show that many euthanasia deaths are non-voluntary. Adding to the utilitarian Pandora’s box opened by euthanasia, Belgian doctors now openly couple voluntary euthanasia with organ harvesting.

— Comments —

Pan Dora writes:

“That’s why she’s campaigning for a change to Belgium’s euthanasia laws, to give the choice of ending their suffering to older children whose bodies are wracked with pain.”

Actually, the paper appears more concerned about the suffering of the mother, not Ella-Louise.

Hannon writes:

Your comment reminded me of Nietzsche’s aphorism that the only cure for the “suffering” of modern people is real suffering.

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