In the Netherlands, fifteen years after the decriminalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide, “more than 25% of deaths in the country are induced“. This is the figure highlighted in the 2017 statistics. More than 6,500 cases of euthanasia have been recorded with 1,900 suicides and 32,000 people killed by “palliative sedation“.
If euthanasia has become “more common” since 2007, it is partly due to “the broadening of the range of conditions deemed eligible”. At the same time, “the definition of “unbearable suffering,” which is at the heart of the law, has also been relaxed“. Today, euthanasia is “considered a basic health service, covered by the monthly premium that each citizen pays to their insurance company“.
And in 2017 alone, the Levenseindekliniek agency[1], which offers its services to patients seeking to end their lives and whose doctors have refused to comply with their wishes, euthanised 750 people.
Wesley J. Smith, co-president and senior partner of the Centre on Human Exceptionalism at the Discovery Institute, pointed out that “since the decriminalisation of euthanasia in the Netherlands, the country’s doctors have embarked on a very dark path. He explained that “induced deaths have increased from the terminally ill to the chronically sick via the disabled and elderly who requested it, but statistics also include individuals with dementia and psychiatric mental disorders (83 in 2017), and the infanticide of babies born with serious or terminal diseases or disabilities, who do not have the capacity to request it”. Wesley J. Smith continues: “Does this mean that the Dutch are dreadful, macabre people? Absolutely not. But they are logical. Once the population broadly accepted the principle that killing was an acceptable response to suffering, the country was led precisely down that path.
For further reading:
United Kingdom: new guidelines for “euthanasia by omission”
In Belgium, 12,550 anticipated declarations of euthanasia in 2018
Spain passes a law on “death with dignity” and paves the way for euthanasia
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) hears Belgian euthanasia case
[1] End of life.
Aleteia, John Burger (22/01/2019) – More than a quarter of the deaths in Holland are “induced,” report finds ; Death on demand: has euthanasia gone too far?