Contact: Heidi Gee or Don Feder, 815-964-5819, 508-405-1337; both with World Congress of Families, media@worldcongress.org
MEDIA ADVISORY, Feb. 22 /Christian Newswire/ -- World Congress of Families Global Coordinator Larry Jacobs expressed "shock and dismay" over Tuesday's vote to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in Luxembourg. Euthanasia is currently legal only in the Netherlands and Belgium.
"Europe is quickly slipping into a new Dark Age, in the words of Winston Churchill, 'made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science,'" Jacobs observed.
The Luxembourg parliament voted 30 to 28 to allow so-called consensual euthanasia, over the objections of Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker and his Christian Social Party.
Proponents are in the process of establishing "guidelines" for euthanasia in Luxembourg. While news sources have reported that the law would apply to the terminally ill, Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition says the bill would also allow individuals with "grave and incurable" conditions to be euthanized.
Obviously, a person can have a condition that's "grave and incurable," but not life-threatening.
"Euthanasia proponents always assure us that the act will be voluntary," Jacobs observed. "But the devil is in the details. Frequently, if a patient is unable to indicate consent, this life-or-death decision is made for them by a relative or a physician."
A 2005 report by the Dutch government concluded that in 2004 there were an estimated 550 killings of individuals who were comatose or otherwise unresponsive in the country.
The Luxembourg bill has gone through first reading. A final vote will come after procedures to implement the measure are devised.
"We hope parliamentarians will have second thoughts about unleashing this lethal measure on the people they serve," Jacobs declared.
The World Congress of Families supports the sanctity of human life, "from conception to natural death." This support is emphasized in the Warsaw Declaration adopted by over 3,000 delegates at World Congress of Families IV. "We call for all governing and political bodies... to protect every human being from conception to natural death, to stress the upbringing of children as the fundamental right of parents, to protect young people against demoralization, and to promote economic solutions that provide dignified living conditions to all families."
For more information on World Congress of Families, go to www.worldcongress.org . To schedule an interview with Larry Jacobs, contact Don Feder at (508) 405-1337.
The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seeks to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the ‘seedbed’ of civil society. The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families – Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007).
