A European court has issued a ruling that a disabled patient can be starved to death against his will.
Vincent Lambert, a tetraplegic patient who has been in a state of minimal consciousness in hospital for six years following a car accident, is current receiving food and water via a feeding tube. The decision to cut his intravenous food and water supply has divided his family. Lambert’s doctors and wife wanted to starve him to death while his parents, who are vehemently opposed to ending his life, took his case to court.
In January 2014 a court in France ruled against starving Lambert to death. But, today, the European Court of Human Rights today issued its decision and, by a vote of 12-5, the Grand Chamber held that a State may take Lambert’s life against his will.
Grégor Puppinck of the ELCJ, a pro-life legal group, tells LifeNews.com that the European Court of Human Rights also refused Vincent Lambert’s parents the right to complain on behalf of their son regarding the inhumane treatment he has been subjected to for three years now, due to stopping his physiotherapy care.
“Thus, the Court not only held that in Europe, we can again legally induce the death of a disabled patient who did not ask to die, but in addition, it denies that patient the protection of the Convention against mistreatment. By refusing to guarantee the right to life and to medical care for Vincent Lambert, the Court is turning a page in the history of human rights in Europe,” Puppinck said. “The Court reintroduced into the European legality the possibility to euthanize a disabled person, even though it is precisely against this ideology that the European Convention on Human Rights was proclaimed in 1950.”
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“In 1946, during the Nuremberg trials, physicians who practiced euthanasia of disabled persons were convicted. These convictions founded contemporary medical ethics. In this sense, the National Consultative Committee on Ethics (Comité Consultatif National d’Éthique, CCNE), in its recent comments had clearly confirmed the ethical prohibition of ending the life of a patient,” the pro-life attorney continued. “Today, the “European Court of Human Rights in good health” revives a fatal practice we hoped to be gone in Europe. For the first time, the Court grants a “margin of appreciation” to States in their positive obligations to respect the lives of people, based in particular on its abortion case-law.”
“This decision puts at risk the “legal death” of tens of thousands of patients in Europe who are in the same situation as Vincent Lambert. The respect for their right to life is no longer guaranteed by the European Court of Human Rights,” he concluded.
In a dissent, the five judges siding with Lambert’s parents and protecting his right to life wrote, “We regret that the Court has, with this judgment, forfeited the” (…) “title of The Conscience of Europe” it was awarded in 2010 for its fiftieth anniversary. The European Court of Human Rights again further turns human rights into an individualistic and utilitarian ideology.”
