The Guardian reports that the new program entitled “Life Ends” will respond to the sick whose own doctors have refused to help them end their lives at home:
The launch of the so-called Levenseinde , or “Life End”, house-call units – whose services are being offered to Dutch citizens free of charge – coincides with the opening of a clinic of the same name in The Hague, which will take patients with incurable illnesses as well as others who do not want to die at home. But doctors cannot be forced to comply with the wishes of patients who request the right to die and many do refuse, which was what prompted NVVE to develop a system to fill the gap . . . According to De Jong, the team will make contact with the doctor who has refused to help the patient to die and ask what his or her reasons were. More often than not, he said, the motivations are religious or ethical, adding that sometimes doctors were simply not well enough informed about the law.
The macabre initiative does seem to provide a safe exit for conscientious objectors. But the fact that such a program exists brings home John Paul II’s characterization of the contemporary moral climate as a ‘culture of death.’ So does this .
