“Children also have the right to die”

Watch the intersting video of the Flandernews.be on this truly debateable question.

 

http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/videozone_ENG/eng.131106_child_euthanasia

16 doctors with different beliefs and political backgrounds have published an open letter in De Morgen to urge politicians to legalise child euthanasia. They say that it already happens in practice, with the consent over every party involved (i.e. children and parents), and argue that they could offer an even better treatment if it is legalised. This can only happen, of coure, under very strict conditions.

As it is already knwon a consensus among members of the legislative body has reportedly formed in support of legislation to allow children to choose to undergo euthanasia in certain dire cases, according to a report in the Belgian daily newspaper Der Morgen, as translated by the Paris-based news agency Presseurop.

If child euthanasia is legalized in Belgium, the country would become the first in the developed world to have a law on the books allowing the practice, although the Netherlands has since 2005 not prosecuted doctors who perform euthanasia on some minors as long as the doctors act in accordance with a set of medical guidelines dubbed the Groningen Protocol.

Belgium became the second country in the world after the Netherlands to legalize euthanasia in 2002, but the statute currently extends only to people 18 or older.

The bill, introduced by the Socialist party in 2012 December, would lay out guidelines for doctors to decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not a child is mature enough to make the decision to end his or her own life, as well as whether a child’s health is grave and hopeless enough to warrant euthanasia.

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