The Community of Sant'Egidio expresses its concern about the process taking place in Belgium, where they are about to vote on a bill that, if passed, will allow euthanasia for minors when they are suffering from a disease considered incurable.

 The conditions imposed by the bill to euthanasia of children are parental consent and that "the capacity of discernment of the child has been verified".

 In this way, the right to practise euthanasia, already legal in Belgium since 2002, is extended to all those who are suffering from serious illnesses and whose free power of choice would have been verified.

A proposal strongly opposed by all religious communities: Christians, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists. 

 "To stop the euthanasia train" is all that is required by the Community of Sant'Egidio in an appeal published today by the leading Belgian newspapers.

Behind an act of so-called 'compassion' - it says - a growing collective irresponsibility is hidden.

"In front of the sick, society does not say any longer: 'we will be in solidarity with you, we will help you to live with all the means and as long as possible', but instead it asks him: 'Think carefully. Are you sure you want to live like this?' In this way it erodes the desire to live and does not support it in resisting the temptation to end their own suffering".

 For the Community of Sant'Egidio, this legal possibility to ask for euthanasia is a form of pressure that can induce in people who are sick, especially in younger people, the idea of ​​being a burden to others and then push the desire to die.

 The article concludes: "As in a collective loss, our society glorifies the death chosen and performed by a physician, as progress of civilization and the maximum of humanism. Allow us to have a point of view, basically the opposite. In the ever-increasing legal possibilities to recourse to euthanasia, we see rather a new form of barbarism: the choice acclaimed by society of the self-elimination of sick and weak people.”