Bélgica legaliza eutanásia para menores de idade

Em Bruxelas

Os deputados belgas adotaram definitivamente nesta quinta-feira (13) uma lei que autoriza a eutanásia aos menores de idade com uma doença incurável, sem fixar uma idade mínima.
A lei, já votada em dezembro pelo Senado, foi aprovada com 86 votos a favor, 44 contra e 12 abstenções. Ela entrará em vigor nas próximas semanas.
O projeto de lei foi promovido pelo senador socialista Philippe Mahoux, autor da lei que autorizou a eutanásia para adultos em 2002, e com a aprovação, a Bélgica é o segundo país europeu a autorizar esse procedimento aos menores de idade, depois da Holanda.
A ampliação da lei sofreu com a oposição de alguns pediatras e da hierarquia católica belga.
O texto prevê que uma criança com menos de 12 anos possa pedir a eutanásia se for "capaz de discernir, tiver uma doença incurável e um sofrimento físico impossível de suavizar e se encontrar em fase terminal".
Para isso, deverá receber o diagnóstico de uma equipe médica, assim como o consentimento dos pais.

do site Bol notícias

Quebec legalises euthanasia by Michael Cook | 6 Jun 2014 | Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard in the National Assembly this week. Quebec has become the first Canadian province to legalise euthanasia. Bill 52 easily passed in the National Assembly by a vote of 94 to 22. “I want to congratulate ourselves as parliamentarians,” said Carole Poirier, of the Parti Quebecois. “Quebec is a beautiful society, and again today Quebec has just shown that we are really, really a different society.” Under the new law, an adult who is terminally ill, of sound mind, and in constant and unbearable physical and psychological pain may request a lethal injection. Quebec now joins the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg as the fourth jurisdiction in which euthanasia is legal. Assisted suicide is legal in across the border in Washington state and Oregon, but not euthanasia. The battle over the controversial law is not over, however. Under the Canadian constitution, the criminal code is a Federal responsibility -- and it bans euthanasia. Therefore Quebec’s legislation uses the euphemism “medical aid in dying” instead and describes it as a health issue, not a criminal issue. “It is for the courts to decide if any province is legislating within its jurisdiction,” a spokeswoman for federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay, said. “It is our government’s position that the Criminal Code provisions prohibiting assisted suicide and euthanasia are constitutionally valid, and in place to protect all persons, including those who are most vulnerable in our society.” A group has already launched an appeal to Canada’s Supreme Court against the law. A family doctor, Paul J. Saba, and a handicapped woman, Lisa D'Amico, claim that euthanasia is not medical care, that the law is unconstitutional and that “Doctors would be in violation of their Code of Ethics as well as Federal criminal law.” site Bioedge

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Religious Discrimination & Racism: It’s Not Old News -

Posted on June 4th, 2014 by Kara Loewentheil

Image sourced from http://americanhistory.mrdonn.org/.

In conversations about our work on religious exemptions law, I frequently compare the refusal to provide wedding-related services to gay couples or reproductive health care to women for religious reasons to the widespread refusal to provide services to African-Americans for religious reasons before, during, and even after the Civil Rights Movement. This comparison is most often met with dismissive incredulity: my audience insists that this did not happen, or that if it did, it was not widespread. But in fact, religious doctrine was routinely used to justify the extensive oppression of, and discrimination against, African-Americans, beginning with religious justifications for slavery and continuing through the 20th Century, particularly in the South under Jim Crow. These arguments were more widespread before the Civil Rights Movement, but even as late as 1983 Bob Jones University, a Christian-affiliated school, was arguing in the Supreme Court that its racially discriminatory dating and marriage policies for students were constitutionally protected as a free exercise of religion. (The Supreme Court disagreed).
As it turns out, this argument is not old news. A new poll released this week finds that a full 10% of Americans think that business owners should be allowed to refuse service to African-Americans if the refusal is religiously-motivated. (Not to mention the 16% who believe business owners should be allowed to refuse service to LGBT individuals – that number is 15% when polled about refusing service to atheists and 12% for refusing service to Jewish individuals). Although that means the overwhelming majority of those polled do *not* support such exclusions, it’s still a striking result.
We should be concerned about these results not only for their face value, but because they point to a dangerous slippery slope. If we allow for-profit businesses (or even non-profit entities providing public services with public dollars) to refuse services to LGBT people or women on the basis of religious belief, we’re not just slowing or halting progress on civil rights – we’re actually leaving ourselves open to dramatic erosion. It’s hard to come up with a principled reason why a business should be allowed to discriminate, for religious reasons, on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex – but not on the basis of race or another religion.
The real difference is that we have a national consensus that formal race discrimination (i.e., race discrimination directly allowed by law) is socially unacceptable. (I’m leaving aside the myriad consequences of more invisible structural racism – on which we do not have a social consensus at all). We don’t have that consensus on gender and sexual orientation. But social consensus can be a dangerously shifting base on which to build our civil rights protections. If the polls on refusing services to African-American or Jewish individuals show a growth in the numbers who find that outcome acceptable, and we have allowed religious refusals of services based on sex and sexual orientation, we are going to have a hard time preserving even the formal civil rights protections that those who came before us fought so hard to obtain.
Kara Loewentheil is a Research Fellow at Columbia Law School and the Director of the Public Rights / Private Conscience Project in the Columbia Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

- See more at: http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/genderandsexualitylawblog/#sthash.YRFfmgr2.dpuf

Columbia Law School Sexuality And Gender Law Clinic Urges Federal Appeals Court To Recognize Rights Of Intersex Child - See more at: http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/genderandsexualitylawblog/#sthash.YRFfmgr2.dpuf

 

Posted on April 9th, 2014 by Cindy Gao

 

Amicus Brief Argues Against Cosmetic Genital Surgery on Intersex Infants Because of Long-Term Harms
Media Contact: Public Affairs, 212-854-2650 or publicaffairs@law.columbia.edu
New York, April 9, 2014—The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit should protect the right of an intersex child to recover damages from doctors who authorized and performed irreversible and unnecessary cosmetic genital surgery on him during infancy, the Columbia Law School Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic argues in an amicus brief filed with the court today.
The clinic’s brief, filed on behalf of the AIS-DSD Support Group, an organization that serves intersex individuals and their families, supports the claims of M.C., an intersex child born with ambiguous genitalia. While in foster care in South Carolina—with authorization from social workers—M.C. was subjected to surgery that removed healthy genital tissue and “assigned” M.C. to be anatomically female. Now 8-years-old, M.C. has developed a male gender and clearly identifies as a boy. The case is M.C. v. James Amrheim, et al.
“The state should not have made the decision to subject M.C. to this life-altering surgery,” said clinic student Rebecca Ramaswamy ’15, who worked on the brief. “M.C. was forced to undergo this procedure purely for cosmetic purposes. Medical experts have long recognized the trauma this irreversible surgery causes and the need for surgeons to wait so that an intersex person can decide whether and to what extent to undergo surgery to change their genitals’ appearance.”
Olena Ripnick-O’Farrell ’14, who also worked on the brief along with Chance Goldberg ’15 and Asmita Singh ’14, agreed.
“International bodies have long condemned the use of surgery to alter the appearance of intersex infants,” Ripnick-O’Farrell said. “Performing cosmetic genital surgery on infants has been recognized as a human rights violation by the United Nations and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, among others. This surgery causes long-term harms and severely limits the medical options intersex children have after their gender identity has manifested.”
The lawsuit is the first of its kind in the United States and charges that social workers and doctors, who authorized and performed the surgery while M.C. was in South Carolina’s custody, violated M.C’s constitutional rights to reproduction, bodily integrity, privacy, and procedural due process.
“The central problem with cosmetic genital surgery on an intersex infant is that no one, including the doctors, knows how the child’s gender identity will emerge,” said Columbia Law School Professor Suzanne B. Goldberg, who directs the Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic and is the brief’s primary author. “But there are other serious problems too—these irreversible surgeries can cause infertility, genital scarring, sexual dysfunction, and depression.”
Read the brief.

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Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Clinic addresses cutting edge issues in sexuality and gender law through litigation, legislation, public policy analysis, and other forms of advocacy.

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Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School combines traditional strengths in corporate law and financial regulation, international and comparative law, property, contracts, constitutional law, and administrative law with pioneering work in intellectual property, digital technology, tax law and policy, national security, human rights, sexuality and gender, and environmental law

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- See more at: http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/genderandsexualitylawblog/#sthash.YRFfmgr2.dpuf

Lei que define como crime a discriminação dos portadores do vírus da imunodeficiência humana (HIV) e doentes de aids.

LEI Nº 12.984, DE 2 JUNHO DE 2014.

Define o crime de discriminação dos portadores do vírus da imunodeficiência humana (HIV) e doentes de aids.

A PRESIDENTA DA REPÚBLICA Faço saber que o Congresso Nacional decreta e eu sanciono a seguinte Lei:

Art. 1^o Constitui crime punível com reclusão, de 1 (um) a 4 (quatro) anos, e multa, as seguintes condutas discriminatórias contra o portador do HIV e o doente de aids, em razão da sua condição de portador ou de doente:

I - recusar, procrastinar, cancelar ou segregar a inscrição ou impedir que permaneça como aluno em creche ou estabelecimento de ensino de qualquer curso ou grau, público ou privado;

II - negar emprego ou trabalho;

III - exonerar ou demitir de seu cargo ou emprego;

IV - segregar no ambiente de trabalho ou escolar;

V - divulgar a condição do portador do HIV ou de doente de aids, com intuito de ofender-lhe a dignidade;

VI - recusar ou retardar atendimento de saúde.

Art. 2^o Esta Lei entra em vigor na data de sua publicação.

Brasília, 2 de junho de 2014; 193^o da Independência e 126^o da República.

DILMA ROUSSEFF