Editor’s note: This article was originally published November 27, 2013. It has been updated to reflect recent developments.
TORONTO –Legislators in Belgium began debate Wednesday on extending that country’s euthanasia law to children.
Euthanasia refers to the intentional practice of ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering.
READ MORE: Belgium set to extend right-to-die law to children
Last December, the Belgian Senate approved the proposal in which would allow mercy killing to apply to people under 18, so long as the parents consent and a psychiatrist and psychologist also approve.
READ MORE: Legislative panels approve youth euthanasia bill in Belgium
Belgium’s House of Representatives are expected to approve it tomorrow.
If approved, Belgium would be the first country to remove an age limit for the procedure, although children under 18 would still require parental consent. The Netherlands has already authorized the procedure on children over the age of 12 who had parental consent in 2005.
According to Reuters, only five minors between 2002 and 2013 sought euthanasia in Belgium and only one of them was under 16.
The euthanization of children in particular has been a controversial topic of debate in many countries around the world. Supporters argue that death in some cases would be more humane than suffering, while critics say the procedure decreases the value of life in modern society and opens the door to infanticide.
“Necessary to give families an option in painful situations”
In an open letter to Dutch politicians, 16 pediatricians said that those under the age of 18 were, in fact, capable of making mature, thoughtful decisions about death.
“Why deprive minors of this last possibility,” they said. “Experience shows us that in cases of serious illness and imminent death, minors develop very quickly a great maturity, to the point where they are often better able to reflect and express themselves on life than healthy people.”
Dr. Jan Bernheim, a professor on the research team for terminal care at the Free University Brussels, agreed and said children are “surprisingly grown up and can think clearly when they are seriously ill.”
“Why wouldn’t you give children who are incurably sick and who are unbearably suffering the same possibilities adults have?” said Bernheim in an article in Deutsche Welle . “They’re not as young as the calendar says. They are in fact psychologically much older and more mature than their calendar age would suggest. That’s why the majority of Belgian pediatricians want to meet the children’s desire to die in these cases.”
In an article for the Voice of Russia, Pieter Sauer, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Groningen said that euthanizing children is an “extremely sensitive matter” and should require a competent panel consisting of doctors, ethics experts and lawyers to be appointed to look into each individual case.
“Sometimes a child suffers so much and his sufferings cannot be alleviated, and although such cases are extremely rare, to euthanize a child suffering from incurable illness would seem more humane than to prolong his sufferings by sustaining his life.”
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“Too young to choose”
In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this month, Charles Foster, professor of medical law and ethics for Oxford University, said he believes children couldn’t possibly have the capacity to make an informed decision about euthanasia since even adults struggle with the concept.
READ MORE: Belgium considering unprecedented law to grant euthanasia for children, dementia patients
“It often happens that when people get into the circumstances they had so feared earlier, they manage to cling on all the more,” he said. “Children, like everyone else, may not be able to anticipate how much they will value their lives if they were not killed.”
In a November 21 blog post, Wesley Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism and a consultant for the Patients’ Rights Council, said Belgium has “leaped head-first off a vertical moral cliff.”
“Once killing is accepted as an answer to human difficulty and suffering, the power of sheer logic dictates that there is no bottom.”
In a joint statement published earlier this month, Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders in Belgium said they are “against the physical and moral suffering, particularly of children,” but they explain that “to propose that minors can choose their death is a way of falsifying their faculty of judgment and, consequently, their freedom.”
“Euthanasia of the most fragile persons is inhuman and destroys the foundations of our society,” they said. “It is a denial of the dignity of these persons and leaves them to the judgment, that is, the arbitrariness of the one who decides.”
– with a file from The Associated Press
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