This May 28, it will be twenty years since Belgium decriminalized euthanasia. Jacqueline Herremans, president of the Association for the right to die with dignity and member of the Federal Commission for the evaluation and control of the law relating to euthanasia, was in our morning show on La Première this Friday morning.
It is absolutely not a question of trivializing life or death, but above all of being able to reclaim death
Some said two decades ago that with this decriminalization, we were heading towards a kind of trivialization of life and death. 20 years later, we are “far from there, explique Jacqueline Herremans. It is absolutely not a question of trivializing life or death, but above all of being able to reclaim death, of being able to reclaim these last moments. And what I can say is that we have gone from isolated death, often in a hospital, to death in solidarity with loved ones who can be prepared for this departure. With the doctor too, who makes a gesture that is anything but trivial, with also the fact that we were able to prepare and build this moment.
Because the choice of euthanasia is a long process. “If euthanasia itself is a few minutes, no more, upstream these are interviews. These are also possibilities that are offered to the person by saying of course, euthanasia is possible, in your case, you meet the conditions, but aren’t there other possible options? And so this sometimes actually makes it possible not to resort to euthanasia, but to be able to apprehend, I would say, other treatments , for example to be able to go further in life.” And to be able to go back. “I am thinking of a very specific case. It is a young man who, when he was 25, had requested euthanasia for psychiatric reasons. He was able to meet doctors who heard his request, but on the other hand , these doctors offered him alternative solutions. And today, he is certainly still, I think, somewhat fragile, but he lives and he has plans for life. For example, he certainly plans to travel, but can -being to live as a couple, to have a child. He projects himself into the future, which was not the case a few years ago.”
Euthanasia is in a way the last treatment, “this is the reason why the doctor who accompanies the patient until the last second must know his patient because it is impossible to perform this gesture, this ultimate care in relation to a patient who arrives in the medical office asking euthanasia.”
Since the decriminalization of euthanasia, 27,000 people have had recourse to it in Belgium. “But beyond this figure, there are also the relatives who were able to accompany the person. There are the medical teams. Very often, when euthanasia has been performed in a nursing home or hospital, nurses who were possibly reluctant about this end-of-life choice and saw that all of this happens in a very serene, no longer have this apprehension for the next request for euthanasia.”
The straitjacket of the advance declaration
We remember that in 2014, the law was amended to open up euthanasia to children and adolescents. If this legislation is considered flexible enough, “iThere is still one point which poses a real problem for us and that since we voted this law, it is the advance declaration. Many people think that no problem, I filled out my advance declaration, so when I would no longer be able to confirm my request, euthanasia will be performed. Unfortunately, this is false in many cases. The person must be in an obviously hopeless medical situation, with a serious and incurable condition. She must be unconscious and the situation must be irreversible in terms of science, her current state of science. That being the case, this has been interpreted as, in quotation marks, an irreversible coma. Which means that there are very few people who can fit into that definition.”
“Advance declaration is a straitjacket. We cannot modulate the circumstances in which we would consider that we could obtain euthanasia. And so what we would like, and the thing is possible, for example in the Netherlands, is for this straitjacket to be shattered and for the person to be able to modulate with the help, for example of a health professional, the circumstances, the context in which I would like euthanasia to be performed.”