‘Unbelievable’ euthanasia law condemned

The Vatican’s daily newspaper has strongly criticised Belgium’s new law extending euthanasia to terminally ill children of all ages as “the most serious misstep committed on a slope that is becoming increasingly steep and slippery”, writes Robert Mickens.

In a front-page editorial in the 15 February issue of L’Osservatore Romano, Dr Ferdinando Cancelli called the law “unbelievable” and unacceptable from a psychological, medical and human point of view.
The Belgian lower house of parliament overwhelmingly approved the law on 13 February.

The Senate had already voted in favour last December.

“Can a child really askto be killed?” wrote Dr Cancelli, a medical doctor specialising in palliative care and an editorialist for the Vatican paper since 2008. “Consenting to the killing of one’s own child [as the law requires] risks unhinging from within the strongest bonds of the human family,” he said.

Dr Cancelli – a member of Opus Dei – argued that there was no justifiable reason to make recourse to euthanasia when palliative care is “now practically able to control almost all physical systems” that cause suffering.