LIFE DIGEST: Dutch euthanasia cases increase
- Jan 5, 2010 - 1 -
Euthanasia cases in The Netherlands continued to increase in 2009.
The number of reported cases of euthanasia in the European country increased by 200 to about 2,500, Dutch News reported. That figure is likely low. Experts said in 2007 about 80 percent of such deaths are officially reported, according to Dutch News.
Also in this edition: NARAL nominates Hall of Shame for 2009, Bangladesh imitates China’s one-child policy, and Injured post-abortive woman receives $1.9 million.
Euthanasia involves the deliberate administration of drugs to cause a person’s death at his request rather than to relieve his suffering.
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition-Canada, pointed in his Jan. 4 weblog to a number of ways in which the figure of 2,500 euthanasia deaths in 2009 is misleading.
For one, assisted suicide deaths are not included, and they would account for about 400 more each year, Schadenberg said.
“Another category of deaths is deaths without explicit consent,” he wrote. “The most recent government report (2005) showed that the number of deaths without explicit consent was approximately 550. Many of the 550 deaths are directly and intentionally caused by the physician but not reported as euthanasia because they lacked consent.”
Schadenberg also said a 2007 report showed about 10 percent of all deaths in The Netherlands were related to terminal sedation. “Many of those deaths were caused by dehydration, due to the physician sedating the patient and then withholding hydration until death occurs, which usually takes 10 [to] 14 days,” he said.
“Finally, the [Dutch News] article acknowledged that people with dementia are dying by euthanasia in [The] Netherlands, but the article didn’t mention how many infants died by euthanasia in 2009,” Schadenberg said. “The Groningen Protocol allows infants who are born with disabilities to die by euthanasia based on the request of the parents and the agreement of the physician.”
The Groningen Protocol consists of guidelines for killing babies with disabilities or terminal illnesses.
The Netherlands is one of three countries in which doctors can legally administer drugs to kill patients. The others are Belgium and Luxembourg. In addition, Switzerland allows physician-assisted suicide, which involves a doctor prescribing but not administering the lethal drugs.
NARAL nominates Hall of Shame for 2009
NARAL Pro-choice America, one of the country’s leading abortion rights organizations, has named five nominees for its Hall of Shame 2009, a category it says is reserved for those “working to take away a woman’s right to choose” to abort her unborn child.
The nominees include Rep. Bart Stupak, D.-Mich., and Sen. Ben Nelson, D.-Neb, as a tandem. Stupak’s amendment to a health-care bill approved by the House of Representatives bars government funding of abortion; but Nelson, the leading Democratic pro-life senator, disappointed pro-lifers by endorsing a Senate health-care proposal that provides federal money for abortion. Other Hall of Shame nominees are Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed pro-life bills that, among other things, require a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion and parental consent before an underage girl can undergo the procedure; the Oklahoma legislature, which adopted a variety of pro-life measures, and Personhood USA, a pro-life organization promoting amendments in states to establish the legal personhood of the unborn child.
NARAL also nominated the following to its Hall of Fame 2009: LeRoy Carhart, a late-term abortion doctor based in Nebraska; MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show;” Baltimore City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, whose bill requiring pregnancy help centers to display signs saying they do not provide abortions or contraceptives or make referrals for the services became law, and these pro-choice members of Congress – Rep. Jose Serrano, D.-N.Y.; Sen. Richard Durbin, D.-Ill., and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.-D.C.
The nominees were listed on a blog on the NARAL website. The votes of readers are being counted, and results will be announced soon, according to NARAL.
Bangladesh imitates China’s one-child policy
Bangladesh is following in the fatal footsteps of China’s one-child policy.
The densely populated Asian country will introduce the new population control initiative but will not make it mandatory, according to a Dec. 23 report by the Chinese news agency Xinhua.
Bangladesh will promote the policy with the slogan “No more than two children, one is best,” said Mohammad Abdul Qayyum, director general of the country’s Directorate of Family Planning, Xinhua reported. Qayyum acknowledged China’s program “influenced us in framing our policy.”
Couples with only one child will be favored in acceptance by state schools and in receiving financial grants.
China has enforced population control since 1979. Its policy limits couples in urban areas to one child and those in rural areas to two, if the first is a girl. Parents in cities may have second babies if the husband and wife are both only children.
Penalties for violations of the Chinese policy have included fines, arrests and the destruction of homes, as well as forced abortion and sterilization. Infanticide, especially of females, also has been reported.
Injured post-abortive woman receives $1.9 million
A New Jersey abortion clinic and two doctors will pay a client who had serious complications from a 2007 abortion $1.9 million in a recently reported settlement.
Rasheedah Dinkins will receive $1 million from Metropolitan Medical Associates, an Englewood, N.J., clinic, and $900,000 from two doctors who were involved in her care at the facility, according to a Dec. 13 report in The Record, a Bergen County, N.J., newspaper. The settlement was reported initially in the New Jersey Law Journal.
Dinkins filed a suit when she suffered massive blood loss, a stroke and a collapsed lung following a second-trimester abortion at the clinic in January 2007. Dinkins, who was 20 at the time, was in a coma for three weeks and underwent a hysterectomy, The Record reported.
Afterward, the state closed the clinic for more than a month following an inspection.
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission works to protect the sanctity of human life. If you would like to learn more about this issue, additional resources are available here. Our free, downloadable Impact resource is also available online. If your church is interested in purchasing materials on the sanctity of human life, please visit our online bookstore and erlc.com.
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comments
1 On Jan 6th, 2010, at 12:12pm, Misty Lion wrote:
“...surely I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin.” This quote by Adolf Hitler is the unfortunate mindset of our world today. We believe it is our right to remove the so called inferior race of our time, the handicapped. Through the process of euthanasia and abortion nations are heading straight into a self genocide with cries of “survival of the fittest!” However, while Darwin’s theory of survival pertained on the process of natural selection through which nature would run its course, the nations of the world have taken that same theory and rather then leave it to “nature” or even God have decided to play God themselves. These are not cries of “survival” rather they are the cries of a dying world consumed in her sin where they would rather not acknowledge but instead remove the problems of this world.
John 5:3-8