Zenit.org
Monday, Dec. 4, 2000

In statements to the press, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls explained that "the approval of a law, which violates the dignity of the human person and places legislators in opposition to public opinion, is a sad record for the Netherlands."

On Tuesday the lower house of the Dutch Parliament approved the draft law 104-40 legalizing euthanasia under specific conditions. Approval in the Senate is considered a formality, and the law is expected to take effect next year, making the Netherlands the first country to legalize euthanasia. Under the law, children as young as 12 will be able to request to be put to death, with at least one parent's consent.

Navarro-Valls said that "this law contradicts the 1948 Geneva Declaration of the World Medical Association, as well as the medical ethical principles approved by 12 countries of the European Community in 1987."

He continued: "The first problem that the legalization of euthanasia generates has to do with the conscience of doctors. We are faced again with a state law that is contrary to the laws of conscience of each one."

Bishop Elio Sgreccia, vice president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, told Vatican Radio that the Dutch law "in practice abandons the patient at a moment of desperation. ... Statistics have shown that these requests for anticipated death in fact are requests for help, for assistance, for human closeness. Those who have overcome this crisis in time have said that they did not want death administered to them, but simply that someone be closer to them."