Hague.– A new law in the Netherlands that will regulate euthanasia in children between 1 and 12 years old with terminal illnesses and “unbearable pain” will come into force next January, after the Dutch Parliament gave its support to the proposal in a debate on Thursday on medical and ethical issues.
The regulation affects terminally ill children who experience “unbearable suffering” and have no hope of recovery and, according to estimates by Health Minister Ernst Kuipers, will benefit between five and 10 children per year, for whom “the termination of life is the only viable option to end their suffering.”
“This is a particularly complex issue that deals with very distressing situations, situations that nobody would want to find themselves in,” said the minister. A review committee and the prosecution will examine each case to determine if it was carried out with due care and legality.
From the liberal party (VVD), Harry Bevers opined that it is good that young children with serious and terminal illnesses “can die with dignity” and hopes that this regulation will put an end to “the dilemma faced by doctors” to carry out euthanasia in children who “cannot decide for themselves”.
The current Euthanasia Law, which came into force in April 2002, is accessible to those over 12 years of age with unbearable and irreversible suffering, provided they have authorized and requested it when they were in full use of their faculties. Parents of babies under one year of age also have access to this rule.
But this law does not regulate the cases of children between 1 and 12 years of age. A 2019 study showed the “great need” for this option, listing several examples of parents reporting how their children “screamed in agony for days or suffered near-continuous seizures” from terminal illnesses.
However, this was a matter of division between the current government partners, with the rejection of the Christian Democrat CDA and Unión Cristiana CU, against the support of the liberals of the VVD and the progressives of D66.
A study from Tilburg University shows that Dutch people between the ages of 20 and 30 have an increasingly conservative view on abortion and euthanasia, compared to previous generations.
Another issue that has emerged during the parliamentary debate is the legal fear of doctors to perform an abortion during an advanced pregnancy when they detect serious anomalies in the fetus. The deputies of the green left GroenLinks have regretted that many women are forced to go to Belgium to abort in these cases, for which the government has promised to investigate the situation.
