Vatican condemns Dutch euthanasia vote

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican launched a stinging attack on the Dutch parliament's vote to legalise euthanasia, saying it "violated human dignity" and "offended European civilisation."

The 104-40 vote in Amsterdam's lower chamber on Tuesday made the Netherlands the first country to vote to legalise the controversial practice after decades of unofficially tolerating mercy killings.

The law is expected to be put to a vote in the upper chamber next year. Approval there is seen as a formality.

"It is a very sad record for the Netherlands to become the first to want to approve a law that goes against human dignity," said Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls.

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"The first problem this law poses is a very serious question of conscience, which doctors will have to face up to. " "Again, we are faced with a law of the state which opposes the natural law of human conscience."

He said the Dutch law went against international declarations on medical ethics that had been adopted for years by the medical community.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that life begins at the moment of conception and ends at the moment of natural death.

The Dutch bill would allow doctors to help patients die under strict conditions.

Supporters of the move, including many doctors, say it champions patients' rights and brings a long-standing practice into the open. Opponents, including small Calvinist opposition parties, say they fear it could be abused.

The Dutch vote was also condemned by Father Gino Concetti, a senior moral theologian at the Vatican whose thinking is close to that of Pope John Paul II.

"Life is inviolable," he said. "So any law that destroys it or approves of its destruction is inhumane.

"This is an absurd decision that goes against the grain of thousands of years of European civilisation and tramples the dignity of the human person."

Concetti, who writes about moral theology for the Vatican newspaper, said no human law could approve something that destroyed life.

"By making this choice, the Dutch parliament has opened a breach in the political and social order of the countries of the European Union and in other places where the issue is still being considered," he said.

Catholic Church canon (law) 2,278 says extraordinary, costly and dangerous life-support systems for a terminally ill person can be discontinued at the patient's or family's request, but actively ending a life is always morally unacceptable.

In recent years, the Vatican has attempted to influence legislators to put the brakes on countries considering legalising euthanasia.

The Pope has often urged Roman Catholic doctors to refuse to perform abortions or be party to euthanasia because the church considers both practices crimes that no civil legislation could justify.

He told Catholic doctors visiting Rome in July that they had an unshakeable mission to defend life from its natural start to its natural end.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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