_WORLD WATCH______________________________
__________________NETHERLANDS____________________
Legal euthanasia
Practice was already common
On November 28 the Netherlands took a crucial step to become the first country formally to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide.
The law was approved by a vote of 104-40 in parliament, and is expected to receive the approval of the Senate and come into force next year. Euthanasia has in effect been legal for 20 years, since the government had abolished criminal sanctions on the practice. But the recent prosecutions of doctors in a few extraordinary cases had propelled advocates to push for full legalization.
Under 1993 legal guidelines, euthanasia is legal only if the patient is enduring irremediable and unbearable suffering, is aware of all other medical options, and has sought a second professional opinion. The request must be made voluntarily, persistently, and independently while the patient is of sound mind. Doctors are not supposed to suggest it as an option. Under the new law, a patient will be able to make a written request for euthanasia, giving doctors the right to use their own discretion when the patient becomes unable to decide for himself.
Euthanasia advocates have said they will not stop with the limits imposed by the new euthanasia law. They want to allow children as young as 12 to demand their own death, even if their parents disagree, and to allow people who are “tired of life” to also ask their doctors to kill them without providing any medical rationale.
A Vatican spokesman promptly condemned the new Dutch legislation allowing euthanasia. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the head of the Vatican press office, made his comment immediately upon hearing that the Dutch parliament had approved the measure. He pointed out that the bill poses “a grave problem of professional ethics for the doctors who must put it into practice.”
Navarro-Valls (who is a physician himself) also noted that the new law violates the Geneva Declaration of 1948, approved by the World Medical Association, as well as the ethical principles adopted by representatives of medical associations from 12 different European countries in 1987. “Yet again we find ourselves face to face with a state law that violates the natural law and the individual conscience,” the Vatican spokesman said.
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