The so-called “safeguards” that usually accompany euthanasia laws are more window dressing than real protection.

That’s according to Robert Clarke, Deputy Director of ADF International, a faith-based legal advocacy organisation, and lead counsel for Tom Mortier at the European Court of Human Rights in Mortier v. Belgium.

In 2012, Mortier’s physically healthy 64-year-old mother was euthanised for what the doctor called ‘incurable depression’. Clarke lists seven of the Belgian law’s “safeguards” and argues that each one proved to be a myth in that case.

One states that the patient must have made a settled and voluntary decision, but Tom’s mother was suffering from a diagnosed psychiatric condition at the point at which her life was ended by lethal injection. To satisfy this apparent requirement, the doctor simply scribbled on the form that she had been “asking for it for years.” And yet this doctor had only met her months earlier; he specialises in cancer, not psychiatry; and appears only to have been approached because of his unquestioning approach to euthanasia.