Belgium: nursing home is fined for refusing euthanasia

St. Augustine rest home in Belgian city Diest was fined 6.000 euro for refusing euthanasia. It is reported by  the Catholic Herald. 

Judges in Belgium have fined a Catholic nursing home for refusing to allow the euthanasia of a lung cancer sufferer on its premises.

The nursing home was ordered to pay a total of €6,000 after it stopped doctors from giving a lethal injection to Mariette Buntjens.

The test case clarifies Belgian law to mean that only individual medical professionals – and not hospitals or care homes – have the right to refuse euthanasia requests.

The 74-year-old woman was instead taken by ambulance to her private address to die “in peaceful surroundings”. Buntjens’ family later sued the nursing home for causing their mother “unnecessary mental and physical suffering”.

Sylvie Tack, the lawyer for the family, said that “it is now black and white that Catholic Church that runs nursing homes cannot intervene in an agreement between doctor and patient”.

But the ruling was condemned by campaigners in Britain who see it as further evidence of the relentless liberalisation of the practice of euthanasia in the Low Countries.

Last year, a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics reported that the majority of euthanasia cases in Belgium involve patients who are illegally “put to death” by doctors without ever giving their consent.

It will be reminded Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2003, a year after neighboring Holland, and it now has one of the most permissive euthanasia regimes in the world.

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