Belgian state agrees to kill depressed woman who failed at suicide
The story in Newsweek is headlined:
Healthy 24-year-old granted right to die in Belgium.
On what measure is a woman who wants to die healthy?
Newsweek reports:
Doctors in Belgium are granting a 24-year-old woman who is suffering from depression but is otherwise healthy the right to die as she qualifies for euthanasia under the Belgian law, even though she does not have a terminal or life-threatening illness.
Aside from the poor mental health the woman is healthy. Or to ou it another way, apart from the crippling illness the patient is perfectly fine.
The 24-year-old woman, known simply as Laura, has been given the go-ahead by health professionals in Belgium to receive a lethal injection after spending both her childhood and adult life suffering from “suicidal thoughts”, she told local Belgian media.
Laura has been a patient of a psychiatric institution since the age of 21 and says she has previously tried to kill herself on several occasions. She told journalists: “Death feels to me not as a choice. If I had a choice, I would choose a bearable life, but I have done everything and that was unsuccessful.” The date of Laura’s death is yet to be decided.
Belgium passed a law to legalise euthanasia in 2002, the second country in the world to do so after the Netherlands. The law states that Belgian doctors can “help patients” to end their lives if they freely express a wish to die because they are suffering from intractable and unbearable pain.
Do we understand her suffering?
Posted: 12th, July 2015 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
