Belgians Love Their Children
Euthanasia, simply put is the practice of ending a patients life in order to prevent future suffering. In most countries voluntary euthanasia is illegal, yet Belgium has recently passed a law that will be removing the age limit for voluntary euthanasia essentially “extending the right to die to children.” People across the world are outraged by Belgian officials, claiming that this move will open the floodgates to an influx of child deaths. However, the chances of that occurring are highly unlikely.
With euthanasia on the rise in Belgium now accounting for 2% of all Belgian deaths, many criticize the act fearing that children will soon begin to add to the rising number of euthanasia related deaths. Yet, strict requirements that are unique to voluntary child euthanasia greatly shrink the pool of possible candidates. Children requesting euthanasia unlike adults, are required to be terminally ill and must suffer (by medical standards) excruciating and unbearable pain. Out of the entire population of Belgium, statistically very few children are terminal, and even fewer of those children are experiencing debilitating, unbearable physical pain. Even fewer of these children will request euthanasia, and only a handful would be approved to die. An influx of child deaths will most likely not occur. Arguing that allowing already terminal children to die will result in more dying children seems redundant.
“We have long held that children do not have the cognitive ability to make adult decisions; this is why they are considered minors. We limit a minor’s decision on tobacco, drugs, and alcohol until they are adults; yet somehow Belgium believes that a minor can make a decision about taking his or her own life.”
This quote by Joni Eareckson Tada from Time.com functions as the foundation for many people’s argument on the matter, claiming that if we offer children the choice they will choose death because they do not fully comprehend it. This hasty generalization assumes that death is a concept reserved for the cognitive ability of adults, although that is simply not true. Studies claim that in order to comprehend the general idea of death, one must understand it’s universality, inevitability, and irreversibly. At around 11 according to scientists, children generally begin to understand these concepts, as well as how to think philosophically. However, every case is different. Some children develop faster and slower than the majority, which is why psychological analyses administered by two psychiatrists are required in order for children to be allowed voluntary euthanasia. These psycho-analyses will effectively weed out children who do not fully comprehend these concepts, as well as children who might be mentally or emotionally unstable.
Another fallacy that this quote commits is penalizing children for not understanding death, when in reality no one truly understands it. The only concrete fact we know about death scientifically is that our bodies decompose, we have no idea what happens to the consciousness. Some of us believe that our consciousness will go to heaven or hell, others believe it will be reincarnated into a different physical form, and some believe that it just disappears entirely. Even as adults we can’t come to a consensus on what death really is. So it seems silly to penalize a group of people for not understanding something, that we even don’t fully don’t even understand.
Additionally, denying children the choice to end their lives will sentence many of them to a lifetime of unnecessary torture. Many against euthanasia claim that modern medicine can alleviate any pain, but that is also a false claim. A man named Danny Bond since birth was afflicted with an excruciating bowel disease. The pain he experienced was gauged by doctors to be at times 3x more painful than childbirth. Without monthly surgeries Danny would have died, and unfortunately the surgeries did not alleviate the pain, only extended his life. After years of agony, he finally voiced that he wanted to die at the age of 13. Living in the U.K. meant that Danny legally did not have euthanasia as an option. At 21 Danny with the help of his parents, starved himself to death in order to escape his never ending pain. A quote by Danny’s mother, Beverly Bond paints a vivid picture. “All he wanted was the privilege to be given an injection that would kill him instantly in seconds, and I had to watch him die in days. There is no justice.” Cases like this are rare but still occur, and our own inability to trust children with this decision sentences many of them to a lifetime full of pain. “All we did was sentence someone to 21 years to hell.” Danny’s mother said.
Just as no man has the right to forcefully take the life of another, it should also be evident that no one has the right to force someone else to live. People oppose child euthanasia in order to protect children, but from what? Death? Death is an inevitable reality that is closer to the terminally ill than it is to the rest of us. Pain and suffering? Extending an unbearably painful life will only bring about more unbearable pain and suffering. The right to live is universal, so why should the right to die only be exclusively reserved for adults? In the end many people forget what this law is all about. It isn’t about killing children, it is about alleviating their unbearable pain and allowing them to die with dignity.
Quinn, Jennifer. “Danny Bond.” BBC News. BBC, 08 May 2004. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
Little Danny Pulls The Plug
feedback please
Feedback provided. —DSH
Josue, since you’ve asked for feedback on the eve of your Rebuttal Argument assignment, I’ll concentrate my attention on providing you as many useful rebuttals as I can (whether I agree with you or not). That way, you’ll know what holes a thoughtful reader pokes in your argument (and what holes you’ll want to patch).
P1. From the looks of your introduction, you plan to combine causality with rebuttal, effectively proposing to argue that the cause/effect fears of others will not be realized: X will not cause Y.
I can see why that might concern you, since it may reduce what you can do in a separate rebuttal argument. Let’s proceed and see.
P2. This first argument is a red herring. You can refute it utterly in a few words.Terminally ill children will shortly die anyway. Allowing them to do so weeks or months “ahead of schedule” won’t add a single death to the tolls.
The only possible relevant fear is that children who might have been saved by some yet-to-be-discovered but imminent cure would needlessly die just ahead of their salvation, but you could, and might want to, offer an illustration to minimize that risk. Think of a childhood disease that has found a cure. Speculate how many Belgian children might have been in the terminal stages of that disease a year or so before it was cured. Reduce that number by half or so to allow for the children who might have held out against euthanasia in hope that the cure would come in time. Etc. Very few kids could possibly have been helped in that time frame.
P3. Your citation skills are nonexistent, they are crap, or you haven’t exercised them yet. Fix this before you do anything else for publication and don’t make the same mistake again. Identify the source of the quote inside your text, then build a proper Works Cited, please.
This is not causal reasoning and probably belongs more in your Rebuttal Argument than it does here, Josue. It’s a categorical argument.
P4. Let’s assume the child is a fully-developed 11-year-old as your illustration suggests. He has a child’s understanding of the concepts and an appropriate psychological development. Does that mean he has the range of experience to appreciate the gravity of situations? Kids fantasize about killing themselves just to prove a point to parents who have disappointed them. “You’ll be sorry when I’m dead.” I hope and trust our decision-making ability improves with age. If it doesn’t, we could stack our juries with pre-teens and get mature justice. The “we don’t put them on juries” argument is much more devastating than the “we don’t let them smoke” rebuttal.
P5. This is a lovely argument, Josue, but what purpose does it serve here? Our various opinions about the afterlife don’t in any way impact our decisions about whether or not to sacrifice our corporeal lives.
You’d be much better off concentrating on what’s lost instead of what’s next. Just as we disagree about the afterlife, we value earthly life more or less. Some think it’s all there is; some that it’s a mere prelude to another; some that it’s one episode of many. THOSE attitudes are more germane to whether the child knows what she’s relinquishing.
P6. This will sound very cruel, but the rebuttal to this argument is that Danny chose to live to age 21. At 13, you say, he asked for death (and was denied medical assistance to bring it about, I presume). He did not starve himself at age 14, or 15, or 16, or at all until he turned 21. So had his doctors helped him die at 13, they would have hastened an event that Danny didn’t elect himself for another many years. Again, very cruelly, he wanted help to do something he couldn’t do himself . . . until he did. Why should we empower doctors to make death easier?
P7. That’s an elegant and nearly irresistible first sentence, Josue. But let’s just say it wouldn’t persuade a committed critic. Of course nobody has the right to subject someone to a life of pain, but how do doctors FORCE anyone to live? They decline to provide easy access to the tools of death in the hospital, but they don’t imprison their patients to torment them. Extending an unbearable life is the patient’s choice, not the doctor’s, and rightly so says your critic. Let the patient kill himself if that’s the patient’s choice, not ask a doctor for a murder.
You have two choices as I see it, Josue. If there’s enough new material here to make a new, independent rebuttal argument to meet your deadline, do that.
If you can’t accomplish that, expand and augment this current work with new rebuttal material and publish a hybrid titled “Definition/Rebuttal Argument” for tomorrow’s assignment A11.
Grade recorded pending revisions in response to feedback.