Knesset To Decide If Doctors Can Kill Terminally Ill Patients

Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com



A law proposed by Yesh Atid Party MK Ofer Shelah that would legalize mercy killing by doctors was discussed by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation today, Arutz Sheva reported. All of the members of the committee – except for the members from the Zionist Orthodox HaBayit HaYehudi Party – voted to bring the bill to the Knesset floor for a vote.



If approved, the law would allow doctors to euthanize terminally ill patients who first twice stated their desire to end their lives. The requests to die must be made two weeks apart in the presence of two witnesses.



Patients would then sign a waiver (if they are physically able to do so), and doctors would end the patient’s life.



Along with strong opposition from the Zionist Orthodox HaBayit HaYehudi Party, hareidi MKs sharply criticized the proposed law.



The proposed law “once again proves that this government has one purpose, and that is the destruction of all Jewish values. The government has lost its respect for the sanctity of life, a hallmark of Jews for all of the nation's existence. It is chilling to think that just 70 years after the Germans, for the first time, established the concept of 'mercy killing' of the lame, sick, and old, that we would adopt the same approach,” MK Eliezer Menachem Mozes of the Ashkenazi haredi United Torah Judaism Party (UTJ) said.



MK Rabbi Yaakov Asher of UTJ said that “the government has crossed a red line today, and is expanding its war from the sanctity of Judaism to the sanctity of life itself. It's time to perform a 'mercy killing' on this government.”



Haredi Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel David Lau also attacked the proposed law.



“Doctors have a right to treat people and make them healthy. They do not have a right to kill people,” Lau said, stating the position of almost all Zionist Orthodox and haredi rabbis.



A leading haredi medical ethics expert, Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Halpern, director of the Schlesinger Institute, also attacked the proposed law.



“If we start deciding on our own whether or not a life is worth saving, we open up a discussion on which lives are 'worthy' of being saved and which aren’t,” Halpern said, adding that there will be no way to halt the “slippery slope” this proposed law will create. “The law will allow society to end the lives of those who don't 'fit in.' Doctors will become a law unto themselves. Murder will become a normal, accepted act,” Halpern said.