Belgian lawmakers are considering a law that would allow terminally ill teenagers and those who suffer from severe dementia to receive a lethal prescription to kill themselves. The legislation also would allow parents of younger children with incurable diseases to have a doctor kill their children.
Under current law, physician-assisted suicide is available to adults 18 and older, and infants who likely won’t survive past age 1 can be euthanized. Since the law’s passage in 2002, there have been an estimated 39 assisted suicides each month, but the actual number is thought to be twice that, the Telegraph reported.
“We see that under euthanasia consciousness, even 'choice' eventually takes a back seat to death as the answer to human suffering,” Wesley Smith, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, wrote on his blog. “In the words of the late Dutch euthanasia opponent Dr. Karl Gunning, ‘Once killing is seen as the answer to one problem, it soon becomes the answer to 100.’ ”
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