A Belgium euthanasia case is making headlines: a 23-year-old girl asked to die because of “irrevocable psychological suffering,” like 50 others have done—out of the 1,500 patients who are euthanised each year in Belgium. Shanti De Corte was a survivor of the Brussels bombings and, having never overcome the trauma, ended her pain by choosing death.
She survived a bomb blast at Brussels airport on 22 March 2016, as she was about to fly to Rome. She was 16 years old at the time. She was standing only a few metres away from the explosion that killed 18 people and injured 92. She escaped the attack unscathed, but only apparently: she never recovered from the shock of that day.
According to the school psychologist who accompanied her, the trauma of the attack found fertile ground in this already psychologically fragile young girl. She had spent time in a psychiatric hospital before the attack. She returned there after March 22nd. She was given antidepressants, in huge quantities—but the malaise remained.
In 2018, she was sexually assaulted by another patient during one of these hospital stays. Despite this, she managed to get back on track, and even testified in the press about her ability to resume her life after the attacks. But in 2020, she fell into depression again. From then on, the downward spiral did not stop. She made a series of suicide attempts and refused the possibility of alternative care, despite the fact that it was paid for by the state.
Instead, she began asking for euthanasia, which was initially refused. The reluctance of doctors to grant her request is understandable: a recent case of a psychiatric patient in the Netherlands, who had also requested euthanasia, proved the efficacy of rejection, as the man eventually renounced his decision to euthanize himself. Feeling the doors close, Shanti then approached a pro-euthanasia activist association in the hope that her request would be successful. Two psychiatrists agreed to grant her request: in accordance with the law, her death warrant could now be signed. On 7 May 2022, De Corte was euthanized at the age of 23, surrounded by her family.
At the time, the Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia in Belgium found nothing wrong with the extermination of Shanti De Corte. But some members of the medical profession objected to the fact that no attempt had been made to treat her in another way, even though there was little to lose.
This case takes on a new dimension as the European Court of Human Rights condemned Belgium on Tuesday, October 4th, for another case. They found Belgium culpable for violating the independence of the control commission: Belgian law does not prohibit the doctor who performs the euthanasia from participating in the commission that decides his own cases.
RTBF news reports that a judicial inquiry has been opened with the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office to investigate possible abuses.
