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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2026
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Europe
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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.
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.
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.