The future of the assisted-death industry can be seen in Belgium just as clearly as in the Netherlands. Next up: a quick way out for teenagers, according to the London Telegraph:
Teenagers should be given the right to medically assisted suicide and the parents of terminally ill younger children should be able to choose euthanasia under proposals from members of Belgium’s coalition government.
The plans to extend rules allowing doctors to perform euthanasia on terminally ill people suffering “constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain” comes amid heated Belgian debate on the issue. [Emphasis added.]
This is nothing more or less than the triumph of “Kevorkianism,” to coin a term. A plan to give teenagers–with a higher proportion of drama queens and kings in their ranks than any other age group–the right to decide when they are in “constant and unbearable psychological pain” such that it would merit a doctor helping them to kill themselves is positively grotesque. It can only have originated with people who either can’t stand teenagers or who were never teenagers themselves.
Under existing Belgian laws, in place since 2002, patients, other than newborn babies, must be over 18 to qualify for assisted suicide, a situation that Bart Tommelein, leader of Belgium Liberals, wants changed.
Mr Tommelein, whose party is a key member of Belgium’s coalition government, has pledged to bring forward new legislative proposals extending euthanasia to children and old people suffering from such severe dementia that they are unable to choose for themselves.
Because people are dogs, and sometimes they just have to be put down, apparently. There’s a word for this kind of thinking: “dehumanizing.”
There are more than 39 cases of euthanasia declared by doctors in Belgium every month, but the true figure is thought to be double that.
Euthanasia is currently permitted on infants and more than half of the Belgian babies who die before they are 12 months old have been killed by deliberate medical intervention.
In 16 per cent of cases parental consent was not considered.
I know all about Godwin’s Law, but I’m sorry–this is really starting to sound like Nazi Germany redux. The fact that the impetus for it comes from the political left rather than the right is a meaningless difference, as are the differing motivations for wanting to move in this direction. The result is the same: lots of people will be dead, and the state and its medical surrogates will once again be in the business of deciding what lives aren’t worth living.
(Via T19.)
Posted by David Fischler 
