EU OK’s lethal injections for Children but objects to US Capital Punishment » Politichicks.tv
Shannon Grady
Here in Brussels, Belgium news of the passage of a controversial law allowing young children to commit suicide was greeted with little surprise and few objections by the European Union. The EU has no qualms about allowing children as young as 10 or 11 to decide their lives are no longer worth living and that suicide by lethal injection is a humane option.
Ironically, children under the age of 18 are still not allowed to enter into legally binding contracts without a parent or guardian signature. They are not considered old enough to understand financial or other cases but now they will be able to decide whether to terminate their own life. They cannot marry, run for office, enlist in the service, drink a beer, smoke cigarettes, or any number of other activities on their own, but they can decide that lethal injection is right for them.
The European Union has said very little to detract or stop the move towards euthanasia that now claims two nations as the only ones in the world where children can opt for lethal injection to end their lives. The Netherlands was the first to allow for euthanasia and it seems other European countries are likely to follow.
Belgian law states that anyone who is able to understand what euthanasia means and is suffering or facing a terminal illness, can opt for lethal injection. However, in the past year this law was ignored and twin brothers from Antwerp, Belgium were allowed to end their lives even though neither of them were in pain nor were they facing a terminal diagnosis. Instead, they were told they would soon be blind and the thought of never seeing again was enough for them to want death. A Belgian doctor described their suicide as peaceful and humane.
In 2011, over 1100 people were euthanized in Belgium. Reportedly, most of the victims were terminal cancer patients. In comparison, the United States has executed only 1277 people since 1976 and in 2011, they executed only 43. So, in only one year Belgium has executed nearly as many people as the entire list of those condemned for various heinous offences in the United States in a period spanning 35 years.
The EU prevents execution and torture in its constitution and has passed a boycott against states who produce one of the main drugs used to give lethal injections. Pentobarbital was commonly used as part of a three drug cocktail for lethal injection cases in the United States. Since there are no US pharmaceutical companies who still produce the drug, prisons had to look outside the US for purchase options. In 2011, the EU placed a ban on the sale of Pentobarbital and effectively ended the former lethal combination from being used for capital punishment.
firemanLet’s take a look at some of the people the EU deem it inhumane to euthanize. We can start with Timothy McVeigh who is notorious for having bombed the Oklahoma Federal building where he killed 167 people and injured another 509. Many of his victims were very young children. Most of us who were old enough, remember the photo of the fireman who carried a lifeless one year old little girl out of the wreckage of the Oklahoma building.
Another mass murderer whom the European Union would fight to keep alive while standing by with a smile as a 10 year old is put to death by lethal injection, was John Ferguson. Mr. Ferguson, along with two accomplishes blindfolded and bound 8 people before deciding to murder each of them. Only two of his victims survived, the other 6 were found murdered still blindfolded and bound. Then, a year later, Mr. Ferguson dressed as a police officer and headed for lovers lane. There he happened upon a 17 year old couple whom he attempted to rob. The couple resisted once they realized he was not a real police officer. The two teens were murdered for their efforts, but not before Mr. Ferguson raped the young girl.
Murderers such as Gary Ridgway, more famously known as The Green River Killer, who confessed to killing 71 women in Seattle, Ted Bundy, who murdered over 36 women and possibly more than 100, John Wayne Gacy, or the Killer Clown, as he was known because he dressed as a clown to lure young boys to their deaths, he murdered 33 boys and buried 26 of them under his home in Chicago, or Dean Coril who tortured and murdered over 29 young boys…and this list could go on. THESE animals the European Union would fight to keep alive while idly standing by as children younger than the victims of these serial killers were put to death.
The EU might argue that these men do not warrant lethal injection because they were not asking for it like the individuals in Belgium. Well, there are even an exceptions to that rule. One particularly dark and evil serial killer did in fact ask to be put to death. A man by the name of Charles Ray Hatcher, who murdered, raped, and tortured 16 children as young as 4. He murdered, raped, and tortured both boys and girls. His last known victim was an 11 year old girl he brutally raped, beat, and strangled to death, leaving her nude body to be found along a river bank. Hatcher actually requested the death penalty but was given life instead. However, the EU would not have budged from their anti-execution position even though this man asked to be lethally injected.
How long before the suicides of men like the twins in Belgium extends to young girls or boys who have low self-images?(Like the sex change patient in Belgium) How long before lethal injection will be offered to those who have a mental illness like bi-polar condition, or manic depression? How long before children with autism or other spectrum disorders will be given lethal injections to end their “suffering”? How long before this slippery slope leads to parents deciding that their Down syndrome child who is now four or five, is just more trouble than they bargained for and euthanasia is a more humane option? How long before parents can opt to euthanize a child who is tragically injured or paralyzed in an accident? How long before men like Stephen Hawking will never have the chance to amaze the world because they will have been lethally and legally murdered? How long indeed, before the European Union embraces every aspect of the Nazi eugenics program once decried as deplorable but now embraced more and more as humane?
In a world where the lives of convicted and in many cases admitted murderers are prized above that of innocent children, we are faced with a twisted mindset. When being blind becomes cause for lethally injecting someone but raping, torturing, and murdering is cause for life…we have exchanged what was once good for what is evil.
Shannon Grady
South Carolina PolitiChick Shannon Grady was born and raised in South Carolina where her first role in politics was as a member of TARS (Teenage Republicans) at her high school. Graduating in 1988, Shannon was born into the GOP during the Reagan era and still adheres to the conservative values that era represented. She has worked as the state coordinator for SGPA in Hawaii and also volunteered for the McCain campaign while stationed overseas in South Korea with her US Army husband. Currently, she is the South Carolina State Coordinator for Smart Girls Politics Action, a conservative 501c (4) women’s group. This is a role she finds challenging but rewarding since she coordinates events for SC from her husband’s assignment at NATO in Belgium. Shannon is a US Navy veteran, a mother of one, and a veteran teacher of US History, World History, Economics, and Government among other courses. She has a BA in History with secondary education as a minor from the University of South Carolina, a MA in Human Resource Management from Webster University, and is currently working towards a doctorate in Educational Leadership from Liberty University. She has written for the SGPA website for the past year and is excited to write for other organizations that support the US Constitution.
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