Civilized?
Recently, I saw a news report concerning the country of Belgium being poised to pass a new law expanding their legalization of euthanasia. The new law will include the medical killing of children, such as autistic children. For years, doctors in Belgium have already been putting Alzheimer's patients and others to death. I was horrified.
I've since done a little research on legalized euthanasia in Belgium. I, and probably most of us, should have been watching what has been happening a little better. Belgium legalized medical euthanasia in 2002. Euthanasia is also legal in the Netherlands, and in Luxembourg. Quebec is now considering Belgium as a model for their Bill 52. New Zealand is also considering such legislation.
Moreover, assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, and in the states of Washington, Oregon, Vermont and Montana.
Those places seem far from me. Maybe that's why I wasn't paying attention. I live in a civilized nation. Oops, some of our states have already legalized assisted euthanasia!
Let's consider some statistics in Belgium. Between 32 and 45 percent of reported medically assisted deaths were done without a request from the patient or from their family members. In 2010, there were 954 medically assisted deaths reported, in 2011, there were 1,133, and in 2012, the number was 1,432 (Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition). Each year, doctors are emboldened to expand the neccessity of medical deaths.
The Belgium law allows for the assisted deaths to be performed only when a doctor is present. However, there are more and more reports of nurses performing the procedures without a doctor in attendence and some without even a doctor's approval.
Do a search online. Find out more about euthanasia laws in other countries. Again, I was shocked.
The supposed reasoning for passing many of the euthanasia laws is to let them "die with dignity." Those who oppose the laws are often ridiculed as not caring for the dignity, or the pain and suffering of others.
I cannot imagine, nor have I ever heard of, a young child who would choose to die. Children appreciate, with joy, the life that God has blessed them with. They do not come with mental baggage and hang-ups. They are amazingly adaptable. Children can find joy, even when they are born with limited abilities. What civilized person would seek to destroy another amazing human being?
Euthanasia is a symptom of mankind's lack of trust in God Himself, and the vanity to think it has the pompous right to be as Maker and decide itself when to end another's life. Doing so confirms the breakdown of society.
Along the same lines of this subject—of life and who has the right to give or to take it—I must sigh and cry at the millions upon millions of abortions that have been performed since that was legalized in the United States at the beginning of my adult life. Shame on the grandmothers who decided they didn't yet want to be grandmothers, who escorted or virtually forced their daughters into going to get an abortion, on their very own grandchildren.
Phil Robertson, the patriarch from Duck Dynasty fame, to his credit, has given talks to small audiences, saying a mother's womb should be the very safest place a flesh and blood person will ever be put in. The womb is a place of protection. But too often, it has become a place of a killing. I want civilization to be as horrified as I am.
What can we do? Be horrified at the lack of value for human life. Repent and pray. Read 2 Chronicles 7:14: "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."
Finally brethren, we have hope that is far greater than anything a man can do (1 Corinthians 15:55).