Dutch Government Makes ‘Life Termination’ Available For Children As Young As One Year Old

The Netherlands is expanding the availability of “life termination” for children between one and twelve years old. This European nation will soon allow doctors to euthanize children who are deemed to have conditions that will lead to “hopeless and unbearable suffering.” The Dutch government claims that this new policy only concerns a small group of terminally ill children whose palliative care options are not sufficient to relieve their suffering and who are expected to die in the foreseeable future.

Dutch Health Minister Ernst Kuipers said, “This is a very complex subject that deals with very harrowing situations. Situations you wouldn’t wish on anyone. I am pleased that, after intensive consultation with all parties involved, we have come to a solution with which we can help these terminally ill children, their parents, and also their practitioners.”

The new policy also seeks to loosen requirements for physicians who attempt to euthanize children since they already “feel reluctance to perform late termination of pregnancy or termination of life in newborns.” Legislative allowances for assisted suicide, sometimes called medical assistance in dying and abbreviated as MAID, have quickly expanded within Western nations.

Critics of assisted suicide note that governments with socialized medicine have clear incentives to promote the practice rather than funding treatment for certain patients, thereby ignoring the innate value of human beings and their fundamental right to life. Death with Dignity, an organization that pushes for expanded assisted suicide in the United States, claims that the practice ensures “people with terminal illness can decide for themselves what a good death means in accordance with their values and beliefs.”

Authorities in the state of Oregon, which ranks among the most liberal with respect to assisted suicide laws but does not permit minors to be euthanized, said in a report that 431 people received lethal doses of medication prescribed by physicians last year.