Sometimes children get life-threateningly sick. Sometimes they get too sick to recover. And sometimes those illnesses can cause relentless and terrible suffering, sometimes even more than can be alleviated with palliative care.

Adults who are terminally ill but otherwise mentally competent have the option of choosing medically-assisted dying. But a child with the identical condition and prognosis is usually out of luck.

The Netherlands is poised to change that.

The Dutch government has approved a change to their legal framework that will allow medically assisted dying for children ages 12 and under, with regulations currently being drafted by Health Minister Hugo de Jong. These regulations are expected to come into effect by early 2021.

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They also daubed the letters "BLM" beneath it.

Breda's mayor, Paul Depla, says the incident is "particularly sad for the Polish community, for which the monument is of great value".

The image of Our Lady of Częstochowa - also known as the Black Madonna - is revered by Poles.

It was erected in a park in Breda in 1954 in thanksgiving for the city's liberation from the Nazis.

The Polish 1st Armored Division, commanded by General Stanisław Maczek, freed the city on October 29, 1944.

After the war, 40,000 inhabitants of Breda signed a petition to award him honorary Dutch citizenship. He is now buried alongside his fallen soldiers at a Breda cemetery.

The organizers of a recent 'racial justice' protest in the city have also spoken out against the vandalism.

Spokesman Patrick van Lunteren says none of the protest organizers know who was responsible for it.

"This hurts the Polish community and that is not the intention [of the demonstration]. People are now open to dialogue, but with these kinds of actions you lose sympathy."

Frans Ruczynski, who is a former chairman of the General Maczek Museum, which commemorates Breda's liberators, says the vandalism is an insult to the Polish community.

"Polish people are very religious. Every Sunday they go to church, with hundreds in Breda. Why would you want to hurt them? We don't know if it comes from the left or right corner. But when it comes to Black Lives Matter, I don't understand it. The Black Madonna has nothing to do with oppression at all."

The original image of the Black Madonna is at the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, which is Poland's most popular place of pilgrimage.

Breda authorities have now removed the BLM graffiti from the mosaic.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic News Agency

On April 22 the country's highest court approved euthanising those who cannot express their wishes, so long as they have left an advance request in writing to say they wished to die.

The ruling comes after the court heard a case of a woman who resisted her euthanisation, even though she had written a directive four years prior, requesting the procedure in lieu of being put in a nursing home.

In the directive, she had said she wished to "be able to decide while still in my senses and when I think the time is right."

Lower courts had previously ruled that the doctor being prosecuted for euthanising her had not acted improperly even though the woman had to be repeatedly sedated and physically restrained during the procedure.

Prosecutors at the Supreme Court argued that her attempt to fight off the doctor indicated that she could have changed her mind, but was unable to verbally communicate.

The Supreme Court concluded that "a physician may carry out a written request beforehand for euthanasia in people with advanced dementia," providing other criteria on "unbearable and endless suffering" also were met.

After hearing the Supreme Court ruling, Cardinal Willem Eijk of Utrecht, who is the president of the Bishops' Conference of the Netherlands, says the number of euthanasia cases will probably surge.

He is also concerned that the new ruling would also put Dutch doctors under pressure to euthanise patients.

"Patients and their relatives could think on the basis of the judgment ... that there is a kind of a right to euthanasia in cases of advanced dementia with suffering, deemed without prospect (of recovery) and unbearable, though the Supreme Court does not say that and the law on euthanasia does not oblige a physician to perform euthanasia," he says.

"Physicians of nursing homes therefore fear that they will be put under pressure by patients with dementia and their relatives to perform euthanasia as a consequence of the Supreme Court's judgment".

Eijk noted that in 2017, during the Lower Court prosecution of the doctor, the euthanasia rate fell by seven percent, but in 2019, following his acquittal, it rose by nearly four percent.

He also questioned whether the advance declaration could accurately express the actual will of a patient.

In his opinion, the new ruling created greater uncertainty rather than clarity over the practice of euthanasia.

"Instead of laying down criteria for interpreting the written euthanasia declarations of patients with advanced dementia, the Supreme Court leaves this to the judgment of the physicians involved, by which their uncertainty only grows."

Source

• Catholic Herald
• Catholic News Service
• Image: Al Jazeera

The Dutch bishops' conference said "much of the information" provided by NRC Handelsblad had been "public knowledge" since 2011.

"The time for praying and apologizing is clearly over; we're in a new phase of firmer commitment to prevent all abuse," Daphne De Roosendaal, conference spokeswoman says.

"But while many people know how much the bishops have done, some media reports still give the impression cases from decades ago have only just occurred."

The spokeswoman says NRC Handelsblad's aim in publishing the story was intended "as a service to the people of Holland" after a mid-August grand jury report on clerical abuse in Pennsylvania.

However, Handelsblad drew its material from previous church-commissioned reports, mostly listing "well-known cases" that had been investigated.

"Since 2010, the church has initiated large-scale investigations as well as a contact point for people to file complaints, arrange mediation and seek financial compensation," she says.

"Although people have been shocked by these latest stories, leaving victims and survivors in pain again, they mostly cover old news. Everything is now in place to ensure sexual abuse no longer happens anywhere in our church."

Sources

• NCR Online
• The Catholic Spirit
• Image: TripAdvisor

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

Researchers in the US found that loneliness, or "social isolation", was a key motivation behind the euthanasia requests of 37 of 66 cases reviewed.

The study by the National Institute of Health looked at killings carried out between 2011 and 2014.

These were permitted even though a person can qualify for euthanasia under Dutch law only if they are suffering unbearably from an untreatable condition.

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