Crossing the Rubicon: The Netherlands' Steady March towards Involuntary Euthanasia
![handle is hein.journals/bjil31 and id is 535 raw text is: CROSSING THE RUBICON:
THE NETHERLANDS' STEADY MARCH
TOWARDS INVOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA
1. INTRODUCTION
In December of 2004, administrators at a Dutch hospital announced a
new policy that would allow pediatricians to kill severely handi-
capped newborn infants. In early 2005, the Royal Dutch Medical Asso-
ciation revealed that it had asked the government to propose new rules to
facilitate the killing of disabled children, the severely mentally retarded
and patients in irreversible comas.2 To foreign observers who have not
been following developments in the Netherlands, these news stories may
have seemed shocking. Modern, liberal democracies are supposed to pro-
tect the mentally challenged and physically handicapped, not kill them.
For those who have been paying attention, however, these latest news
reports merely represent the next logical step3 in the Netherlands' quix-
otic attempt to regulate euthanasia.4
The Netherlands became the first country in modern history to for-
mally decriminalize euthanasia, the controversial practice in which a
physician terminates the life of a patient upon the patient's request.5 The
1. Michael Horsnell, Netherlands Hospital Started to Kill Terminally Ill and Se-
verely Disabled Babies with the Consent of their Parents, TIMES LONDON, Dec. 4, 2004,
at 13. The administrators at Groningen Academic Hospital in the Netherlands have issued
procedural guidelines to guide physicians as they provide euthanasia to infants. Id. The
clinical guidelines are not yet available in English.
2. The Dutch Ponder Mercy Killing Rules, CNN.com, Dec. 1, 2004,
http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/12/01/netherlands.mercykill/index.html.
3. Ian Traynor, Secret Killings of Newborn Babies Traps Dutch Doctors in Moral
Maze: Call for New Rules to End Dilemma for Medical and Legal Professions,
GUARDIAN, Dec. 21, 2004, at 3 (From the point of view of the Netherlands, this debate
about newborns is a logical development, says Professor Henk Jochemsen, a medical
ethicist and Christian critic of euthanasia. It's another step in the wrong direction.).
4. Euthanasia typically refers to an act of a physician that is primarily intended to
cause, and in fact causes, the death of a patient. Euthanasia was archaically referred to as
'mercy killing,' however, that term is generally avoided due to its highly pejorative con-
notation. See, e.g., Lara L. Manzione, Is There A Right to Die?: A Comparative Study of
Three Societies (Australia, Netherlands, United States), 30 GA. J. INT'L & COMP. L. 443,
444-46 (2002).
5. The Dutch define euthanasia as the termination of life by a doctor at the patient's
request, with the aim of putting an end to unbearable suffering with no prospect of im-
provement. MINISTRY OF HEALTH, WELFARE AND SPORTS, INFORMATION AND
COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT, EUTHANASIA: THE NETHERLANDS' NEW RULES (2002),
available at http://www.minvws.nl/en/folders/ibe/euthanasia the netherlands newrules.
asp [hereinafter NETHERLANDS' NEW RULES]. The generic term euthanasia derives from
ancient Greek for good death, meaning a wholesome and honorable end of one's exis-](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/bjil31&div=21&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Crossing the Rubicon: The Netherlands' Steady March towards Involuntary Euthanasia
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