New Belgian law aims to force doctors into Euthanasia
ANALYSIS
BRUSSELS, March 17, 2016 (LifeSiteNews)
– A handful of Belgian lawmakers are trying to obtain a radical change
to the rules governing euthanasia in the country, where so-called
“mercy-killing” has been legal since 2002.
Not
content with one of the most liberal euthanasia laws in the world, the
socialist representatives now want to oblige doctors who have
conscientious objections to killing their patients asking for
euthanasia, to refer them to a doctor who is prepared to do so. This has
been interpreted as a sort of new obligation to accede to all
euthanasia requests within a very short period of time, and the wording
of the proposed legislation supports this. The changes also include
enhanced rights attached to a patient’s “living will” as well as the
negation of the right to conscientious objection for institutions.
Surprisingly,
the Belgian press paid minimal attention to the three draft laws
submitted to the Chamber of Representatives on February 23 by six
socialist members; they even went unnoticed in the Flemish papers. It
must be said that they constitute a second or third attempt in this
direction: very similar draft laws were unsuccessfully put before the
Parliament in 2013.
In England, where the euthanasia debate is still ongoing, the news item was picked up by The
Daily Mail under the shocking headline: “Belgian lawmakers to vote on
world's first death on demand law which would mean no doctor could stop a
patient who wants to die.” The newspaper added that the new laws were
said to “have a high chance of getting support from parliamentarians.”
This remains to be seen, in particular because draft law 1677/001
compelling referral of patients to doctors willing to perform euthanasia
appears to be at odds with the law it aims to amend. Under the present
system, a patient asking for death has no right to the procedure, and it
is up to the doctor to make the final decision in view of a series of
legal requirements.
The
text presented by Laurette Onkelinx and others would all but destroy
Belgian doctors’ right to conscientious objection. Nothing – for as long
as it lasts – can oblige a physician to administer a lethal injection
to a patient who is asking for one. But much as doctors refusing to do
abortions are in many countries obliged to refer women to a practitioner
who is known to perform them, making them complicit to the act, the
Belgian representatives want to ensure that candidates for euthanasia
are put in contact with a doctor who is willing for them to obtain the
procedure.
The
analogy is far from perfect: abortion is a procedure that is available
on demand in the countries where such laws exist; euthanasia is a
medical decision consequent to a patient’s demand, but under legally
defined circumstances.
Draft
law 1677/001 sets a seven-day limit for doctors who are faced with a
euthanasia request to give their answer, of which they must inform
either the patient or his or her person of trust. The French version of
the text adds that the doctor must give reasons for the refusal. These
can be linked to conscientious objection or to case-linked objection: at
any rate, the doctor is then obliged to communicate the patient’s
medical file to “another doctor who will accede to his or her euthanasia
request,” says the draft law.
This
appears to suppose that the second doctor will of necessity be prepared
to euthanize the patient, whatever the circumstances. Strange indeed,
as euthanasia remains a criminal offense in Belgium: all such acts are
supposed not only to meet legal conditions but to be reported to a
commission that decides whether the procedure required investigation or
even prosecution. While it is true that the Belgian commission has
seldom if ever decided that the law’s criteria – including unbearable
suffering – were not met, creating what would appear as a fully-fledged
“right to die” would contradict the existing law.
Draft
law 1676/001 creates a mirror right to conscientious objection: the
amended euthanasia law could affirm a right to perform the act. It
reads: “No doctor can be stopped from performing a euthanasia in virtue
of a convention. When necessary, such a prohibition clause would be
deemed unwritten.”
This
means that hospitals, hospices, and other institutions would not be
allowed to invoke the right to conscientious objection in order to
prohibit euthanasia to take place within their walls. The text is a
direct attack on those Roman Catholic health care institutions – and all
others who want to remain true to their duty of protecting life – that
refuse to perform euthanasia. It must be added that most Catholic
hospitals are happy to provide it. The fact that the euthanasia lobby is
relentlessly hunting down the few hospitals where euthanasia is not a
matter of course is a sure sign of its totalitarianism.
Last
but not least, the third draft law wants to abolish the “sunset clause”
attached to living wills, giving them indefinite validity instead of
the five-year span in which they are currently taken into account by
physicians. The text underscores the fact that it is often difficult to
determine the date when a patient is no longer capable of expressing his
or her will, and thus to see whether a living will made in view of such
a situation is or not older than five years.
While
the proposed law does allow patients to put a personal limit on their
living will’s validity, the new “default setting” would create a
situation where a young person’s living will would be applicable to the
aged and changed person he or she would later become.
But
that is the whole point of euthanasia: more and more, its proponents
want euthanasia to be considered as a right, or at least the “right”
solution to situations of age, fragility and dementia.
How
far will the Belgians go? At the present time, the most worrying aspect
of the proposed changes is that hardly anyone seems to care.
Source: LifeSite News
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