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Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing in response to a newspaper article regarding the young woman (24) named Laura...

read « Clive wants to talk to LAURA ! »

At least 50 patients are euthanased each year for purely psychiatric reasons, says the leading figure in Belgian euthanasia, Dr Wim Distelmans. In an interview in the Belgian magazine Humo, he says:

Manic-depressive patients, in their manic moments, are capable of doing the most improbable things: plundering their bank accounts, staying for weeks in five-star hotels, buying several cars in a single day. At that stage they are not mentally competent, obviously. But in moments of depression, exhausted ... they are certainly competent. Then they can say, for example: "I have lived through crazy highs and lows for 30 years; I've tried everything to break that infernal cycle, including psychiatric hospitals, but now I'm back on the baseline, and I know I have a few weeks left before I'm sinking into the depths or rising to heights....

read « 50 or 60 Belgian patients euthanased annually for psychiatric reasons »

Accepting a mentally ill prisoner's request to be executed shows up the madness of Belgium's euthanasia laws.

early 20 years after Belgium abolished the death penalty – and 64 years after it's last execution – the Belgian courts have agreed to a prisoner's request for a state execution. The prisoner, Frank Van Den Bleeken, sought the right to be executed because he was 'suffering unbearably' from a life-long psychiatric condition, according to his lawyer Jos Vander Velpen...

read « Belgium's insane right-to-die laws »

Theo Boer is a Dutch medical ethicist who has changed his mind on euthanasia. This is an article he wrote for the UK's Dail Mail warning the House of Lords not to pass an "assisted dying" bill.

In 2001 The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia and, along with it, assisted suicide. Various safeguards were put in place to show who should qualify and doctors acting in accordance with these safeguards would not be prosecuted. Because each case is unique, five regional review committees were installed to assess every case and to decide whether it complied with the law...

read « We were wrong, says former regulator of Dutch euthanasia »

The Belgian law passed on 28 May 2002 and authorising euthanasia imposes the following condition, namely that the patient must be suffering from a "serious, incurable disease".

Eleven years later, an extension to the practice is about to be approved, but numerous spin-offs have been noted...

read « "Euthanasia for minors could be taken" is Belgium heading? »

As a nurse in Brussels, I first worked in a cancer ward and in a care unit support. So I was very quickly confronted with the demands and the practice of euthanasia. For six years, I have seen how this law significantly undermines the links of solidarity we have for the sick. More than just highlighting dubious procedures, today we are now helping along a radical change in attitudes towards death and care of the dying.

Euthanasia legal, ethically precariou...

read « Lifting the veil: what really happens in Belgium's healthcare system with euthanasia »

Advocates of legalizing euthanasia reject "slippery slope" arguments as unfounded fear-mongering and claim that its use will always be restricted to rare cases of dying people with unrelievable, unbearable suffering. But, as the Netherlands and Belgium demonstrate, that's not what results, in practice.

The logical and practical slippery slopes are unavoidable and inevitable, because those consequences are built into the act of legalization through its justification of inflicting death. Once we cross the clear line that we must not intentionally kill another person, there's no logical stopping point...

read « Why euthanasia slippery slopes can't be prevented »