Belgium’s experience shows assisted suicide should not be allowed in Scotland
I see the drive to legalise euthanasia is with us again despite it being rejected twice in the last ten years by the Scottish Parliament (your report, 14 February).
Those proponents ought to read Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Lessons from Belgium by Professor Benoit Beuselinck, a cancer doctor, who reported that personnel are leaving palliative care departments, saying the wards are at risk of becoming “houses of euthanasia”.
Belgium legalised euthanasia in 2003, and permits the voluntary killing of people who are terminally ill, suffering from psychiatric illnesses, have dementia, or believe their mental suffering is unbearable.
In 2014, the law was amended to permit the euthanasia of dependent children. The number of doctor-assisted deaths doubled within five years, up from 954 in 2010 to 2,021 in 2015.
Prof Beuselinck reveals the worrying evolution of legalised euthanasia in Belgium where palliative care units, meant to make dying patients feel more comfortable, are used as dumping grounds for people who want to be killed. Hospital doctors who are uncomfortable with their requests simply send them to the palliative care wards, where euthanasia has become “a normal way of dying”.
Experience in Belgium, the Netherlands, Oregon and Washington shows that legalised euthanasia leads to incremental extension and mission creep as some doctors will actively extend the categories of those to be included (from mentally competent to incompetent, from terminal to chronic, from adults to children, from assisted suicide to euthanasia).
Persistent requests for assisted suicide and euthanasia are extremely rare if people are properly cared for, so our priority must be to ensure that good care addressing people’s physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs is accessible to all. A good doctor can kill the pain without killing the patient.
Proponents of assisted suicide in general use emotive language and hard cases as an argument for its legalisation. Hard cases make bad law. In a free democratic society we accept limits to our own freedom in order to safeguard the interests of vulnerable others.
Every single life has inherent worth and dignity and we should never forget this. MARTIN CONROY
The Orchard, Cockburnspath, Berwickshire