Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: They’re not gonna kill themselves, right?
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
To the Beligans, any potential punishment for violating those “strict safeguards” to make sure that doctor doesn’t just start killing people at random is too much, and that it must be made easier for a doctor to kill.
“In a remarkable ruling, Belgium’s Constitutional Court has declared the country’s euthanasia law to be unconstitutional and will therefore need to be modified.
“The ruling does not imply that euthanasia is, or soon will be, illegal in Belgium: rather, it merely notes that key provisions of the law cannot be consistently reconciled with Belgium’s Constitution.
“In its written judgment, the Court concluded that Article 3 of the current euthanasia law implies that violation of the so-called ‘procedural’ conditions for legally ending someone’s life is punishable by the same standards as the violation of so-called ‘fundamental’ conditions.
“This, the Court argued, is both intuitively unreasonable — given that it implies that a doctor who violated a minor procedural condition while administering euthanasia would be technically guilty of murder — but it is also unconstitutional, insofar as it violates the principles of equality and non-discrimination enshrined by Articles 10 and 11 of the Belgian Constitution.
“The Court’s ruling follows that of a controversial recent legal case in the city of Dendermonde in East Flanders, in which several doctors were acquitted of the murder of Tine Nys, a 38-year-old patient who claimed to be experiencing “unbearable psychological suffering.”
“The doctors’ defence counsel successfully argued that was unjustifiable to accuse the doctors administering Nys’ euthanasia of murder when they had only violated a procedural condition.”
What does this mean?
“Rather than restricting doctor-administered death, the ruling in fact means that the law will be amended to make it easier and less risky to euthanize the mentally ill, elderly couples who fear widowhood, very sick babies, the victims of botched sex-change surgeries, the chronically ill and disabled, people with PTSD, etc., with organ harvesting thrown in the deal as a plum to society.”
