Euthanasia (also for minors) rejected by the medical community

eutanasiaBelgium has approved in the first instance the bill that extends the possibility of euthanasia to terminally ill minors, if they have requested it and provided that a psychologist has certified the “capacity of judgment” of the underage applicants.

As many have already pointed out, pro-pedophilia people should rejoice in it as, if a psychologist were really enough to certify minors’ “capacity of judgment” about their suicide, why should not the same be applied also to give the green light to sexual intercourse with adults?

Euthanasia for minors has been approved eleven years after the full approval for adults (with a 500% increase of the deaths by euthanasia between 2003 and 2012) and this proves the inevitable inclined plane, at the beginning it was legalized only for terminally ill adults and from then on it was impossible to stop: it was the turn of non-terminal patients, then of those who suffer at a psychological level, then of elderly people even with no disease until today, when it has been authorized for children in terminal phase. And the plane remains inclined towards further extension. “When Belgium legalized euthanasia”, said Tom Mortier on “National Post”, “there were assurances that it would be tightly controlled and limited to exceptional cases. But the number of cases rises every year – reaching nearly 2% of total deaths in 2012 — and the definition of what is acceptable is expanding”. Moreover, euthanasia was often practiced on healthy people and without their consent, as happened to the mother of Marcel Ceuleneur.

The European Parliament held a debate about the new Belgian law which was attended by Professor Etienne Vermeersch, the father of the abortion and euthanasia laws in Belgium, who explained that the amendment to the law in force since 2002 is required “to allow euthanasia on disabled people”, both adults and children. “Il Foglio” has revealed that Vermeersch entered the Jesuit order in 1953 but in 1958 he broke with the Catholic faith and became a skeptic and an atheist activist, a “humanist” (author of “Why the Christian God cannot exist”). In 1979 he advocated the decriminalization of pedophilia and his name is especially known for the theory of overpopulation as a major threat to humanity. He argues that governments should intervene to restrict fertility rates to a single child per couple, supporting the inhumane one-child policy in China.

Fortunately, the rejection of this Belgian law has been almost unanimous in the medical-scientific, religious and political world, with the exception of the Italian Radicals. All of the major medical associations in the Western world are opposed to all forms of euthanasia and assisted suicide, in Italy notable critics include the National Bioethics Committee (NBC), the National Council of Psychologists and the National Federation of Medical Associations (Fnomceo), whose president Amedeo Bianco has rightly pointed out: “euthanasia is absolutely forbidden by our Criminal Code and also by the Physicians’ Code of Ethics” and it must also be added that today “there are some effective anti-pain therapies which can alleviate even the worst suffering situations”.

He continued: “It’s hard, with the progress made by analgesic therapies against pain, to imagine that today there may be some suffering conditions on which no action can be taken and which cannot be alleviated. This is true even if you foresee and know that the use of such pharmacological techniques may still lead to an acceleration of the dying process. It should be stressed, however, that today there are the tools to relieve pain and suffering, which are the elements that can determine the choice of euthanasia. Rather, it seems to me that this proposal concerns a culture, the Belgian one, which is deeply different from ours, both from the legal and the bioethical point of view”.

The statements of Bianco, president of the National Federation of Medical Associations, are compelling secular reasons against pro-death theorists, and it is right for us as Catholics to address the bioethical debate this way, not only by promoting ethical-religious motivations.

The editorial staff, transaltion by Vito

Share on:
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on OKNOtizie
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Windows Live
  • Share on MySpace

Facebook comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *