Belgium's faith leaders: Don't allow kids to decide on own euthanasia
November 15, 2013 - The president of the Belgian bishops' conference joined other
faith leaders who criticized proposed legislation to extend euthanasia to children
and dementia sufferers, warning the measure risks "destroying the functioning of society."
"We are also opposed to suffering, whether physical or moral, and especially the suffering
of children," Archbishop Andre Leonard, conference president, said in a joint statement
with Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders. "But to suggest minors can decide on their
own euthanasia is to falsify their power of judgment and their freedom. To suggest
persons with dementia can also be euthanized is to deny their dignity and hand them
over to the arbitrary judgment of decision-makers," they wrote. Some Belgian legislators
have proposed extending a 2002 euthanasia law to include children and dementia sufferers.
Two senate commissions will draft a bill, which then would be debated in parliament.
The religious leaders said such a bill risked "the growing banalization of a very
grave reality," adding that they were "deeply alarmed ... as citizens relying on philosophical
arguments, and as believers inheriting our respective religious traditions." "Instead
of supporting a suffering person and gathering persons and forces around to help them,
we risk dividing these forces and isolating the suffering person, branding them guilty
and condemning them to death," said the Nov. 6 statement. About 1,200 cases of euthanasia,
most involving terminal cancer, were registered in Belgium in 2012. In summer 2012,
a mentally ill man serving 20 years for a double murder became Belgium's first prison
inmate to be euthanized. In November 2012, the government announced plans to follow
the Dutch in allowing euthanasia for Alzheimer sufferers, as well as for children
"if capable of discernment or affected by an incurable illness or suffering." In
an October survey by Barometre Politique, 75 percent of Belgium's 11 million inhabitants
favoured allowing euthanasia for children in an irreversible coma or vegetative state,
while 80 percent supported it for dementia or Alzheimer patients facing "unbearable
grief." However, in their statement, religious leaders said caregivers and medical
practitioners would face pressure to accept euthanasia, while freedom of conscience
and consent would lack effective safeguards. The statement said all forms of suffering
cause dismay, "but to prescribe euthanasia for vulnerable people radically contradicts
their condition as human beings. We cannot enter into a logic which will lead to destruction
of society's very foundations." Catholics nominally make up three-quarters of the
Belgian population, although only one in 10 attends church services. (Source: CNS)