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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2026
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A reactionary government would certainly try to expand the criteria for euthanasia. If the EU and other international bodies continue to erode, someplace in the West will certainly reinvent life unworthy of life.
Fortunately NL not only permits euthanasia in very strict cases, but the doctor is now undergoing a case review by prosecutors. This keeps every doctor performing euthanasia criminally liable.
Euthanasia so often gets portrayed as if it is just like an option at the buffet table that you can chose if you so feel like it. But that is not even remotely like how the system is set up in the Netherlands at all.
The only case in which someone is even eligible for euthanasia is if they suffer from a chronic illness, for which there is no possible cure, and you effectively will have to endure undue suffering for the rest of your life. And as you say, at that point it is still up to the discretion of the doctor, who is in turn liable for that decision. There is a whole bunch of checks and balances to make sure that it doesn't just become a free-for-all.
This is not some ploy by some reactionary government to eradicate "life unworthy of life", as distal@lemmy.ml suggest
You don't understand. The child, while suffering extremely, is in no way able to consent to their killing. The state sanctions it as ok, as long as a list of criteria are met. This signals to other powers, who view the Netherlands as a role model that state sanctioned involuntary killing in medicine is fine, as long as you have a long list of reasons you can go through.
Compare it to Germany implementing Palantir, which has signalled to other nations that Palantir is fine.
It is not a ploy by a reactionary government, that is not what I was saying. I was saying that it is something a reactionary government can and in fact will use to get rid of what is considered less pretty and detrimental to unifying a nation/building a national ideal.
Which at that point becomes a decision that is made by the parents, not the state. The state can't decide for you that you will be euthanised. That is a decision to be made either by the person in question, or in the case of a two-year-old their parents.
The alternative would be to not allow euthanasia on young children at all, and force this child to live with their disease and experience hopeless and unbearable suffering for ten years, until they are twelve years old. That was the old cut-off point for decisions like this.
The way I see it, is that giving parents to ability make this decision on their child's behalf, in order to make sure their child doesn't have to needlessly suffer, can be a good thing if done carefully and thoughtfully. The checks and balances are there to make sure that is gets done carefully and thoughtfully.
I certainly wouldn't call that an erosion of the west as per your first comment.
So because another country might not be deliberate in the way they implement their version of euthanasia, we shouldn't be implementing our version of euthanasia?
Edit: Removed the quote characters around "erosion of the west", because it isn't a direct quote. It's a paraphrasing, and it's disingenuous of me to put that in quotes.
I have to get this straight because you are again misrepresenting my statement. Europe and the United States are in crisis. Right wing extremists are becoming political leaders. The erosion of the West is fact and not some reactionary comment dreamed up by someone envisioning hordes of outsiders flooding their continent. I did not call euthanasia itself a part of the erosion of the west, I was simply mentioning at a general development.
Secondly, I don't believe the parents should decide. The nuclear family is a horrifically outdated model where the direct relatives get to play owner. I think it's extremely worrying that the parents are affirmed in their role of "people who know best" at every turn in politics from left to right.
Yes exactly, and another country making mistakes doesn't absolve the Netherlands if the Netherlands serves as law-inspo
So, I shouldn’t be using fire, as my neighbour could burn their house down because they saw me using it.
Got it.
Bad comparison
In that case I must apologize. I misinterpreted what you meant with that erosion. I also shouldn't have written it as a quote as I initially did, since it was paraphrasing and not a direct quote. I didn't mean to misrepresent.
That still doesn't change the rest of my argument, however.
That's fair. We differ in opinion on that, and I can see where you are coming from.
My issue with that, however, is that we then end up in a situation again where this child needs to spend ten years in whatever pain and agony they might be going through, just because they legally cannot make the decision by themselves.
Preferably that should not be happening, and giving the parents the ability to decide on their behalf is in my view an acceptable compromise to prevent that suffering from happening. While it is a decision with a lot more weight, we already do give parents a lot of power to make decisions for their child in other situations, so it is not entirely without precedent.
I think this is a ridiculous take. The Netherlands cannot be held responsible for what it didn't do itself.
Thank you.
Yes, and this is why I say that helping families and children as much as possible is important. If it costs 30 million to support a child, so be it. How the weakest members of a society are treated indicates the over all health of a society.
I think you can't view things in isolation. Lawmakers are acutely aware of the reception of their actions abroad.
Well the child was so severely disabled and had such severe brain damage, that he could never, ever in his life, consent to anything in the first place.
His entire existence was hell. Drowning in his own lungs just trying to breathe, constant seizures with no treatment, an underdeveloped brain that couldn’t even form thought but only feel pain.
There’s truly no good answer here. On one hand, you are indeed ending a human life.
On the other hand, that life was nothing but a hell you couldn’t even imagine, 24/7. His entire life had zero joy in it. Ever. And no matter how long it lasted, it never would.
Prior to modern medicine, the answer would have been to leave the poor baby out on a hill and let the wolves eat it. Or just watch him die slowly and in pain because there’s nothing you can do.
The only “wrong” answer is to unnaturally keep him alive, in pain and suffering 24/7, just because “human life”. Of all the options, euthanasia is by far the most humane. That baby was NEVER going to grow up and live any sort of semblance of a normal life. That baby was in extreme suffering every second of every day of his short life. Suffering you could never imagine.
People said that about me. I had developmental issues, by far not as bad as the child you are referring to, but bad enough to make doctors believe I had epilepsy. Potentially a progressive form.
Someone I knew in school had muscular dystrophy. My developmental difficulties persisted into my young teens and the one thing I remember him saying to me was "the Nazis would have killed us both." Where he is right now, I could not know. He might not be alive anymore.
People would have said we were suffering, or be under some kind of pain, despite our lives being full of worthwhile moments. Adults tend to say things that make reality feel comprehensible. A defenceless child is the victim of the narcissistic adult who is unable think beyond their feelings and perception of reality. The narcissistic need to feel in control and competent borne from a society where it's everyone against everyone.
It feels like a punch in the face. People making a show of the suffering or what they perceive to be suffering while at the same time not advocating for a morsel of assistance to disabled people. In fact, they would maintain that killing the disabled person is sufficient assistance. Inequality in healthcare, lacking support networks, ableism, all swept under the rug while crying "look at the suffering!"
You are dramatically downplaying the suffering of this baby though.
He was in constant agony. Constantly drowning in his own mucus. Severe seizures that would not respond to treatment. He was functionally blind, and also could barely move his own body due to the severe cerebral palsy.
Have you ever been close to drowning or waterboarded? It's one of the worst feelings imaginable. It's extremely painful to not be able to breathe, and you have a massive wave of primal fear from the feeling of death. And this baby was in that 24/7. He was also in severe pain because of the constant epileptic seizures. And trapped in a body that he couldn't even move.
They didn't just up and say "fuck it, kill him". They tried for nearly two years, since birth, to do everything they could to medically help him. Nothing worked. The baby was living in hell. Constant extreme pain.
I feel for his parents. I can guarantee that it was a horrific decision they had to make. But at the end of the day, letting the baby they love continue to exist in pure constant agony with no hope of ever alleviating it, is far less humane.
Well, we'll see how history will play out.
Oh, well if the government says it's legal that could never go wrong or be changed by a global tide of fascism trying to bring back the absolute worst parts of the last century.
I am unsure if the NL is going to stick to their strict processes, when we consider what happened in Canada under MAiD.
Errr...sure. Let's hope the people there don't start behaving like Canadians then.
You know who will feel pressured to put their child through this right now with it being a thing? Parents of lower socioeconomic standing. If you have a lot of resources you will be able to accommodate your sick child better, you might be able to give them dignified natural end of life care. People who have little money, workers, are not in that position. Involuntary killing is always related to class.
The problem is that a reactionary government is going to use anything to advance their agenda?
Name any government policy and I can show you a way it can be twisted to serve evil ends.
Get rid of old gas guzzling cars? New cars must have 24/7 GPS tracking 'for safety.'
Environmental protection has historically not been associated with mass murder. Euthanasia on the other hand has been associated with mass murder. In some countries, Germany for instance, the word euthanasia itself is so dirty that no politician dare even hint at it when designing policy, and that's excluding medical policy.
While that may be true, it doesn't preclude the idea that euthanasia may be the best solution to a person's problems.
I can both hate school shootings and believe that individuals have the right to own weapons.
Also, If you look at the history, the reason suicide is so hated is that the Church realized that the people who wanted to kill themselves were young women who didn't want to marry old men and young men who didn't want to have to work forever.
It wasn't a 'pro life' policy, it was a 'make sure these kids provide us with what we want.'
You are talking about decisions where there is consent from the affected party and cases that don't correlate too well (guns and school shooting example, where there exist gun liberal nations that have relatively low rates of school shootings). A child cannot possibly consent to nor understand medical suicide. It's not a dichotomy where it's equally horrific that a child isn't able to consent to a continued life (while suffering in some way) , because once euthanasia for a child is chosen, it is permanent, as opposed to the decision to keep a child alive not being permanent.
Suicide is hated because a lot of the time the person committing suicide regrets it the second they do it. Suicide is hated because life is the purpose of every living being, on some logical level it doesn't compute. Suicide is also hated because it affects people of worse socioeconomic standing to a greater degree than people who are in a comfortable spot. The are of course exceptions with cases of severe illness, but they require a sound grown up mind!
Parents make decisions for children all the time.
Yes, and that is highly traumatic for children. Child rearing being an atomised, personalised thing of the direct relatives is not a historical constant. More communal forms of raising children have exist and will exist.
Yeah we came full circle. Dutchies are certainly pushing boundaries in areas I wish we left unexplored.
I disagree. I think it’s valuable and important to come up with reasonable and humane policies that protect the sanctity of life, while also ensuring we don’t cause needless suffering. There is a boundary somewhere and whether or not you’re comfortable with that, some people will have to deal with being close to it.
In this particular case a hands off approach would have ended suffering all on its own and active medical intervention would have kept it going. Better to make the end as humane as is even possible anymore.
Although it’s true that this poor soul was not in a position to consent to death, the corollary is they were not in a position to consent to a life of mostly suffering either.
I don't think people want this. Nobody sees an article like this and is like, "hell yeah, they killed a kid!"
This is a very complex, very difficult subject