Portugal Parliament Approves Euthanasia of Disabled Patients
Originally published at National ReviewThe left-wing Portuguese Parliament has again approved euthanasia legalization in the wake of a court ruling earlier this year overturning the last attempt.
This time, it is explicitly open season on people with disabilities who ask to die. From the AP story:
The new version, approved in a 138-84 vote with five abstentions, has a much fuller description.
It refers to a “serious injury, definitive and amply disabling, which makes a person dependent on others or on technology to undertake elementary tasks of daily life.” The bill states there must be “very high certainty or probability that such limitations endure over time without the possibility of cure or significant improvement.”
Being “dependent on others or technology to undertake elementary tasks of daily life” is very broad, and could include unremarkable aspects of care like aid with simple hygene. And doesn’t that provision tell us something dreadful about what is happening to Western civilization? In nations such as Canada, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, parts of Australia, and so forth, rather than improve care potentialities for people who are elderly or living with disabilities, the answer increasingly is to allow (and normalize) their killing.
Left-wing parties claim to care so much for the vulnerable. But they sure are in a hurry to allow them to die.
Hopefully, Portugal’s president will veto.