The woman, who was in her 20s, was given a lethal injection after battling severe psychiatric problems for 15 years.

Details of the case were released by Dutch authorities anxious to demonstrate that mercy killings in their country are carried out under full and correct medical supervision.

A report on the case said that the woman, who was killed last year, had post-traumatic stress disorder that was resistant to treatment.

Her condition included severe anorexia, chronic depression and suicidal mood swings, tendencies to self-harm, hallucinations, obsessions and compulsions.

She also had physical difficulties and was almost entirely bedridden.

Her psychiatrist said "'there was no prospect or hope for her. The patient experienced her suffering as unbearable".

However, the report also disclosed that two years before her death the woman's doctors called for a second opinion, and on the advice of the new doctors she had an intensive course of trauma therapy.

"This treatment was temporarily partially successful," the report said.

But regulators found that doctors had behaved properly in authorising the death of the sex abuse victim.

The report found that all therapies had been exhausted.

"There was no prospect or hope for her," it said.

"She had constantly felt that she was dying, but did not die."

"The desire of the patient was to die," the study said.

The woman was deemed mentally competent and able to request euthanasia.

This was granted after the specialist treating her took the precaution of seeking the opinions of a second psychiatrist and a doctor.

British MP Fiona Bruce, chair of the Parliamentary All-Party Pro-Life Group, said: "This tragic situation shows why euthanasia should never be legalised in this country."

"What this woman needed, at a desperate point in her young life, was help and support to overcome her problems, not the option of euthanasia."

Sources

• Daily Mail
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Care Not Killing

It's clear that New Zealand will one day vote in a voluntary euthanasia law.

But the ‘slippery slope' from voluntary euthanasia to non-voluntary euthanasia can't be avoided once the initial limited voluntary act is passed. Why so?

Voluntary euthanasia is presumed the ultimate act of self-determination. Current society is well primed to accept as an absolute good the right of individuals to do whatever they like with their own bodies.

Likewise individuals should decide for themselves the limits of their personal suffering and may select voluntary euthanasia to end their pain. But this promised autonomy is an illusion.

The individual who requests euthanasia is not realising autonomy but rather relinquishing it to medical experts.

He or she is exchanging the apparent tyranny of the natural lifespan for the power of the medical expert to permit or deny. He or she has relinquished personal subjectivity to science unto death.

The medical expert who legally practices euthanasia has already accepted that euthanasia is a merciful good for suffering patients. Therefore legal voluntary euthanasia which is undeniably a direct killing would be included within the medical principle of beneficence; a principle which once rejected direct killing as maleficence.

Medical beneficence can be defined as those actions and intentions of the medical profession to do that which is good for the sake of their patients.

There is now no reason why the principle of beneficence now inclusive of euthanasia as a direct killing could not be bestowed on the incapacitated patient as a good they would have consented to if they could. Active consent becomes presumed consent and we have a ‘slippery slope'.

Individuals seeking voluntary euthanasia empower the medical expert with the information as to why they request euthanasia. This information can be compared to the lives of incapacitated persons who are unable to give their own personal consent.

The various conditions, illnesses and psychiatric disorders which inflict the quality of individual lives of those seeking voluntary euthanasia can be used to mark out those persons who would if they could consent to euthanasia.

Consent then can be understood as a window of opportunity simply missed by these incapacitated patients. Within the new informed principle of beneficence no one need put up with suffering anymore.

To this end the experts focus is the measure of qualities lost and limitations born in suffering; the personal dignity of a human life is measured by changeable and extrinsic criteria. Like Alice Down the Rabbit Hole we could eventually find ourselves in a very strange sort of world.

The fact is non-voluntary euthanasia is embedded within the presenting concept of voluntary euthanasia as both swill from the same utilitarian trough.

Public opinion in New Zealand is empathetic toward euthanasia with support around 70%.

But Hospice New Zealand, who are specialists in palliative care of the dying oppose voluntary euthanasia.

The Catholic Church will always oppose it. As GK Chesterton said the Church "saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age."

• Lynda Stack graduated as a distance student with a BTh from Good Shepherd College. She is now studying for a Masters at the JPII Institute in Melbourne. Lynda is married. She and her husband have two adult children who are living overseas.

In 2002, Belgium became the second country in the world after its neighbour, The Netherlands, to legalise euthanasia. Over the next decade our country has become a living laboratory for radical social change. With many other countries debating legalisation at the moment, now is a good moment to stand back and take a good long look at the results.

In 2002 Belgium was governed by a coalition of Liberals and Social Democrats. The slightly more conservative Christian Democrats had been excluded. With blue as the colour of the Liberals and red of the left-leaning Social Democrats, the press dubbed it the Purple coalition.

The Christian Democrats took a dim view of euthanasia, but they were in opposition. The Purple coalition was free to pass an euthanasia law based on the view that an individual should always have a "free choice" to end his life. In absolutizing individual self-determination the left and the right found common ground.

The law states that doctors can help patients to die when they freely express a wish to die because they are suffering intractable and unbearable pain. The patient needs to consult a second independent doctor; for non-terminal illnesses an independent psychiatrist must approve. In practice, however, this independence is irrelevant. Belgium is a small country and compliant doctors are easy to find.

A string of recent cases leaves no doubt that the euthanasia law has fundamentally and drastically changed Belgian society. Last year 45-year-old deaf identical twin brothers who couldn't bear the thought of going blind were granted euthanasia. Doctors granted their request because they "had nothing to live for" anyway. According to the doctor who gave the lethal injection it was not "such a big deal". Continue reading

Sources

• MercatorNet
• Image: CBC News World

Some 200,000 people who were mentally ill or disabled were killed in Germany during the Nazi era. The cynical name for the extermination program was "euthanasia," which means "beautiful death" in ancient Greek. This horrific past has shaped the way Germany treats the terminally ill and the disabled. Germany's laws on assisted suicide are restrictive, and the country has stricter rules on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, a form of embryo profiling, than most other European countries.

In 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Germany ratified in 2009. It calls for a so-called inclusive education system for all children, which means that children with disabilities and behavioral disorders should be allowed to attend mainstream schools. The German city-state of Bremen adopted the inclusion requirement in 2009, and other German states are in the process of implementing it.

Now a debate has unfolded on the pros and cons of inclusion. Proponents say that being different has to become normal. But opponents believe that inclusion comes at the expense of special-needs schools, that teachers are overwhelmed, that better students are short-changed, and that disabled children feel excluded in mainstream classes.

It is a debate in which some are berated as idealists and others as ideologues. But, ultimately, the real issue is how to define the moral standards of coexistence.

Berlin contemporary historian Götz Aly, 65, has a 34-year-old disabled daughter named Karline. In a SPIEGEL interview, he talks about the joys and hardships of everyday life with a disabled child. Aly has spent 32 years studying the issue of euthanasia. His book, "Die Belasteten" ("The Burdened"), was recently published by the S. Fischer publishing house.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Aly, you have studied the murders of the disabled and mentally ill in the Nazi era, or what was then referred to as "euthanasia." Didn't the issue strike a little too close to home for you?

Aly: I know, of course, that my daughter would have been one of the candidates for murder at the time. But Karline's illness 34 years ago was precisely the reason I approached the subject in the first place. Perhaps it was also a way for me to come to terms with it. That's what brought me to study the Nazis. It doesn't bother me when issues affect me personally. On the contrary, it bothers me that many Germans who write about the Nazi period behave as if they have no personal points of reference. I sometimes amuse myself by asking older colleagues: "Now what exactly did your father do in World War II?" Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: Deutschland.de

Labour MP Maryan Street has drafted a member's bill that would make it legal for people who were terminally ill or suffering from an irreversible disease, to take their own life or have someone help them to die.

The bill has to be drawn from the member's ballot before it will be debated in Parliament and that could take some time.

A Horizon Research poll released last week found 62.9 per cent of respondents supported the move, 12.3 per cent were opposed. The poll involved 2969 adults who self-selected to participate online between July 5 and 20.

Street is hoping her bill will be pulled from the ballot next week if space is made following member's day in Parliament on Wednesday. It would be put to a conscience vote, meaning MPs would not have to vote along party lines, if drawn.

The proposed change would make it legal for New Zealand residents aged over 18 to end their own life or seek assistance from someone else to do so. And it would enable doctors and others to assist, though neither they nor the person ending their life would be able to be coerced into the decision.

National MP Maggie Barry has already launched an anti-euthanasia campaign. She believes it is not a sensible option because of the world-class palliative care available in New Zealand.

Source:

• Stuff.co.nz
• Image: electionsmeter.com

Back when my father's life was coming to an end at an excruciatingly slow pace, my brother and I vowed not to die like that, with so much compromise and indignity.

But hanging on seems to be the norm in our culture, thanks to advances in medical technology and the widely held opinion that death is optional. Lots of folks seem convinced that even aging is avoidable — if you just keep getting more work done.

Is it like that in other cultures? Read more

Sources

• Steve Lopez in the Los Angeles Times
• Image: Stuff

Reflecting on her elderly mother's recent death, Deborah Coddington puts forward the view that noone wants to administer euthanasia.

"The NZ Medical Association is opposed to voluntary euthanasia ... So the chances are slim of finding a doctor to assist suicide," she says.

• Read Deborah Coddington's article
• Image: Tehran Times

Deborah Coddington is a Herald on Sunday columnist.