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Catholic World News News Feature

Belgian cardinal opposes extension of assisted-suicide law January 12, 2007

Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Brussels has voiced his opposition to a proposal that would extend the Belgian law allowing physician-assisted suicide.

The cardinal spoke out forcefully against a proposal that would broaden the application of the existing law to allow assisted suicide for legal minors and patients who are judged to be mentally incompetent. This extension of the law would be “unacceptable,” Cardinal Danneels told the medical journal De Huisarts.

While the Church already opposes the existing law, which allows patients to authorize a doctor to take their lives, the proposed inclusion of patients suffering from dementia is still more gravely disordered, the cardinal said, “because those people can no longer make the decision themselves; they don’t have the choice to say Yes or No.” He concluded: “Others decide.”

Cardinal Danneels said that he would oppose broadening the assisted-suicide law. “I ask those who call themselves Catholic to do the same,” he said.