Belgium Goes over the Brink:

Belgian Lawmakers OK Assisted Suicide Bill

By Brian Johnston, NRLC Western Regional Director

On May 16, after long debate, Belgium's lower house approved an assisted suicide bill. As it is not required that the patient be terminal, the new measure even goes beyond the widely abused laws of neighboring Netherlands.

The House of Representatives approved the bill 86-51, with 10 abstentions. The Senate had already approved it last year.

The bill defines assisted suicide as an act practiced by a third party intentionally ending the life of a person at his request. Under the bill:

* Doctors may end the life of patients who have reached the legal adult age (18 in Belgium) at their specific, voluntary, and repeated request.

* A patient seeking assisted suicide must be in a "hopeless" medical situation and be constantly suffering physically or psychologically.

* If the person is not in the terminal phase of his illness, his doctor must consult with a second doctor, either a psychiatrist or a specialist in the disease concerned.

* At least one month must pass between the written request and carrying out the act. Similar "safeguards" have been frequently ignored in the Netherlands, fostering widely documented cases of unrequested euthanasia.

Belgian Christian Democrats immediately vowed to challenge the law in court. "Today we fought the law with our votes. Tomorrow it will be before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg," said Christian Democrat Tony Van Parys.

The court challenge offers some hope. In April that same human rights court unanimously rejected an appeal by a terminally ill British woman suffering from a motor neuron disease who wanted her husband to be legally free to kill her. In May the woman, Diane Pretty, died in her sleep.

Perhaps more importantly, Reuters Health reports that Belgian doctors are opposed to the new law. Members of the Belgian Medical Association told Reuters Health that "they are concerned the law will permit euthanasia in cases where a patient has an incurable disease but still has years to live."

"Doctors know that this law is simply flawed and find it totally unacceptable that individuals who are not terminally ill will also be eligible for euthanasia," said Marc Moens, vice chairman of the Belgian medical chamber, ABSYM. According to a survey taken last year by a Brussels-based medical journal, "75% of doctors opposed the new law, with 8 out of 10 claiming that they would be unwilling to carry out patients' requests for euthanasia," Reuters Health reported.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, on May 8 it was reported that a Dutch nurse was indicted on murder charges in the deaths of 14 terminally ill hospital patients - all young children or the elderly. Most of the deaths took place in hospitals in The Hague.

While the indictment is a positive sign, it should be noted that relatively few medical professionals have been successfully prosecuted in the Netherlands. The 'vindicating' decisions often result in widening the practice of non-voluntary euthanasia.

On another hopeful note, the newly elected government of the Netherlands favors a revision of the country's law that permits euthanasia. The Christian Democrats (CDA), who had opposed the legislation for euthanasia debated in Parliament last year, won the largest number of seats in the Dutch general election in the first week of May.

According to Reuters, Albert Jan Maat, a CDA member of the European parliament, said, "The reality is that people are not so keen on euthanasia as on greater possibilities of care and palliative treatment, and this is a request that gained ground when euthanasia was legalized in the country."