by Mike Gray

According to a survey conducted in Britain, ScienceDaily reports that

[a]theist or agnostic doctors are almost twice as willing to take decisions that they think will hasten the end of a very sick patient’s life as doctors who are deeply religious, suggests research published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

And doctors with a strong faith are less likely to discuss this type of treatment with the patient concerned, the research shows. The findings are based on a postal survey of more than 8500 UK doctors, spanning a wide range of specialties, which was designed to see what influence religious belief — or lack of it — had on end of life care.

According to BBC News, the topic of euthanasia has divided Europe. In France, for example

[u]nder the “end of life” law, doctors are advised to avoid taking extreme measures to keep dying or brain-dead patients alive. Active euthanasia, even at a patient’s request, remains illegal.

However,

Luxembourg’s parliament has voted to legalise euthanasia, after a passionate public debate. It is a predominantly Catholic country and the medical profession was broadly against the legislation.

As for the Netherlands:

In 2002, the Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia, although it had been widely tolerated since the early 1970s. The rules are strict and cover only patients with an incurable condition who face unbearable suffering.

…. Euthanasia of new-borns and late abortions is illegal in the Netherlands, but a commission was set up to examine whether or not to regulate the practice of ending the lives of new-born babies classed as “seriously suffering.”

But according to a 2008 article in The Interim:

In 2003, a group of “ethicists” at the Groningen University Hospital began looking at the question of infant euthanasia in the Netherlands. The 2002 law allowed the euthanasia of consenting persons over the age of 12. The problem that the committee at Groningen University was attempting to solve was: what should be done with newborns that are born with anomalies? The Groningen Protocol was promulgated in 2005 and established a set of guidelines to be followed for the purpose of euthanizing infants in the Netherlands. The Groningen Protocol was based on reports from Dutch physicians concerning the deaths of 22 infants who were born with spina bifida. Dutch physicians were not being prosecuted when they euthanized newborns with spina bifida based on the Prins case in 1997. Prins was a physician who escaped prosecution after he euthanized an infant with spina bifida.

The Groningen Protocol allows euthanasia of infants when the parents give consent and when the child is considered to lack an “acceptable” quality of life. These decisions are made based on quality-of-life judgements that are connected to the new eugenics ideology promoted by Peter Singer of Princeton University that is becoming more prevalent in our current culture.

With all this talk of “death panels,” the next time you get a cough you’d be justified in asking your doctor how they would define “seriously suffering” and “an acceptable quality of life”—and then asking for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth . . . .