Last May, Belgium banned kosher and halal slaughters in its biggest territory, the Walloon region, by outlawing the killing of unstunned animals.
The new law, which will take effect in 2019, is the handiwork of Belgian animal rights activists, who consider the practices of Jewish kosher and Islamic halal rituals (which require a butcher to swiftly slaughter the animal by slitting its throat and draining its blood) less humane than stunning animals before killing them.
And despite claims of antisemitism and Islamophobia from human rights groups across the European country, Belgium’s northern Flemish region is set to follow suit and enact a similar law later this year.
It’s great that Belgians are concerned about the wellbeing of their animals — albeit at the possible cost of religious freedom of its ethnic minorities — but it would be nice if the Land of Chocolates and Beer was equally concerned with the physical welfare of its people.
Just one day prior to the kosher and halal slaughter ban decision, a group of psychiatric care centers run by a Catholic order in Belgium announced it will now allow doctors to undertake the euthanasia of “nonterminal” mentally ill patients on its premises.
The so-called Brothers of Charity Group (BCG) said that the decision to allow these patients to undergo a controlled death in their hospitals is an act of compassion.
The group, which is considered to be the most important provider of mental health care services in the Flanders region and which received criticism and a hefty government fine for refusing to allow the lethal injection of a lung patient last year, has admitted that there may be some “discrepancies” between the new policy and traditional Catholic doctrine (which forbids the taking of human life).
The BCG maintains that Belgian euthanasia laws are focused on patient autonomy and intended to “prevent more violent forms of suicide.”
But in accordance with Belgium’s euthanasia regulations, a patient must have a “demonstrable capacity for rational decision-making,” which would, by definition, exclude patients with psychiatric illnesses.
Belgium’s euthanasia law was written to allow terminally ill patients to voluntarily end their life when their suffering has become too great to bear.
That is not the case with nonterminal psychiatric patients.
Under the new BCG policy, a patient at a mental institution must be “considered hopeless, unbearable and untreatable” by a staff of doctors and must be the result of a patient’s “repeated and voluntary” request to end their life.
But if a patient is not mentally sound, how can their request for euthanasia be considered voluntary?
Belgium has always played fast and loose with its euthanasia laws.
Having legalized the practice in 2003 — just one year after the Netherlands became the first country since Nazi Germany to introduce the procedure — it recently became the first country to legalize the euthanasia of minors of any age.
And last year, it allowed a 17-year-old terminally ill patient to be euthanized.
But according to the International Association of Forensic Mental Health Services (IAFMHS) and most neurologists around the world, the adolescent brain is not fully mature and may not fully understand the consequences of such a decision.
The rush to kill off patients is already taking a serious toll on Belgian society, where 5 percent of all deaths in 2015 were by euthanasia.
Although it is a difficult decision, euthanasia should be legal for adult terminally ill patients who are in full control of their mental capacities.
But giving lethal injections to people who are disabled, demented or mentally ill is reprehensible and should not be tolerated in any society.
Thérèse Margolis can be reached at [email protected].
