PRESS RELEASE

Slide into Barbarism: Belgium
Legalizes Euthanasia for Children

Feb. 19, 2014 (EIRNS)—While active euthanasia has been authorized for adults in Belgium since 2002, the Parliament has now legalized it for children - without any age limit. 86 MPs voted for and 44 against, with 12 abstentions. To justify their vote, many MPs used the usual arguments of the euthanasia lobby: no one would be forced to die, children should be able to put an end to unbearable suffering, everyone should be "free to choose" if they want to live or die.

Defenders of the law also claim that use of euthanasia would be strictly restricted for minors: the child would have to be terminally ill, the parents would have to give their consent, an MD or psychologist would have to ascertain that the minor is "conscious" of his decision.

But no one should be fooled by this. Such thinking opens the floodgates to Nazi-style euthanasia of those considered to have "lives not worth living". Just as Pope Francis warned in his recent exhortation against an "economy that kills", so-called mercy-killing for children and adolescents instills a culture of death, which inevitably leads to pessimism and a sense of "no future". Indeed, the case of Belgium shows how quickly a society can degenerate from restricted euthanasia for adults (2002) to justifying killing ever greater categories of society.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche identified the root of the problem:

"The basis for this decision is brutal cost efficiency thinking and a policy that rewards banks and speculators with more and more bailouts and cheap liquidity, while raising public debt to such an extent that social systems can no longer be funded. It is only a question of time before the same policy hits those who have made this law. The end of the casino economy through immediate implementation of the Glass-Steagall Act is the only way out of the dilemma."

Zepp-LaRouche's call is sure to reverberate in Germany, where a new law on euthanasia is scheduled to be debated and voted on next Summer.