Euthanasia Brings End to Belgian Monarchy

by Marie Meaney
Crisis Magazine

There has been no coup, no abdication, no revolution. It is an event that has gone largely unnoticed. The media have hardly spoken about it. Yet it is a reality. The monarchy in Belgium is done with, over, kaput. The king of Belgium has turned himself out of his royal throne by signing a law on March 9 that permits child euthanasia. But some might say that this royal assent is not the end of the Belgian monarchy, but, on the contrary, assures its longevity. As the newspaper, La libre belgique has stated, the Belgian king “has fulfilled his constitutional role perfectly,” despite being pressured not to sign the law. Had he refused to sign it, he might have been forced to abdicate and the monarchy itself might have disappeared in Belgium, since it is already on shaky ground.

But when the monarchy is mainly representative (having to sign laws without any right to veto or change them, gives it de facto a representational role to play, even if the Belgian monarchy is called a constitutional one, where the King would typically nominate and dismiss ministers, and exercise some executive powers), then it’s main raison d’être is its moral role. It is supposed to be a moral guide in a confused world, independent of party politics and therefore less moved by the ideological winds that blow where they wish. When everyone else buckles under, when common sense, basic human decency and the most sacred moral laws have been thrown overboard, then the king should stand up and shine some light into this Babylonian darkness.

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 Marie Meaney received her doctorate and an M. Phil. in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford. She is the author of Simone Weil’s Apologetic Use of Literature: Her Christological Interpretations of Classic Greek Texts (Oxford University Press, 2007). Her booklet Embracing the Cross of Infertility (HLI) has also appeared in Spanish, German, Hungarian and Croatian. Before the birth of her daughter, she was a teaching fellow at Villanova University. She now lives in Rome, Italy.