Word: euthanasias
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...These days in the Netherlands and across much of Europe, divisions over euthanasia have largely healed. Polls in the U.K. and France show up to 80% support for legal changes that would allow patients enduring extreme suffering from a terminal illness to request medical assistance to shorten their lives. "The consensus in the Netherlands is that we don't prolong life just because we technically can," explains Johan Legemaate, legal adviser to the Royal Dutch Medical Association. "When a treatment does not improve the patient's situation, a doctor is obliged to stop...
...removed, and Schiavo's doctors and the Florida state courts have approved that request. In the U.S., though, religion and faith-based politics intervene in a way that baffles Europeans. "It would have been handled very differently in Europe," says Wim Distelmans, chairman of the Federal Commission of Euthanasia in Belgium, where euthanasia is permitted if performed by a doctor after an adult patient clearly states a wish to die. "Because of the politics, it's now impossible to have a sensible debate on the issue in the U.S." Writing in the Times of London last week, foreign editor Bronwen...
...debate in Europe centers less on whether euthanasia is right or wrong than on how to regulate it. Yet there are striking differences in terminology and approach. In the Netherlands, a medical treatment can be terminated when it is no longer "meaningful." In Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal under certain conditions, euthanasia is still forbidden. In practice, though, voluntary euthanasia - when a doctor ends a patient's life with his or her consent - is common. A 2003 University of Zurich study showed that 7 out of 10 terminally ill Swiss resorted to voluntary euthanasia by, for example, ingesting...
...Justice after making controversial remarks on homosexuality and the role of women, applauds American politicians' intervention in the Schiavo case. "It's moving to see a great participation of the American people and great movement for life," Buttiglione told Time. "It will strengthen the position of those opposing euthanasia in Europe and start a debate here...
...there is little evidence of one. Ten years ago, Pope John Paul II signed the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, which deemed euthanasia a "crime that no human law can claim to legitimize." "There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws," the encyclical reads. "Instead, there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection." Many Europeans, though, seem content to leave harrowing decisions like those in the Schiavo case to the consciences of families and physicians...