A nearly 2-year-old child became the first victim of the Netherlands’ expanded euthanasia regime for young children, with government investigators ruling that doctors acted with “due care” when they ended the toddler’s life late last year.
The killing marks a grim milestone in the European nation’s push to loosen restrictions on ending the lives of its youngest citizens. The Netherlands legalized euthanasia for severely ill children between the ages of 1 and 12 in 2024, and this case represents the first death under those expanded rules.
According to a government report from the Assessment Committee for Late Termination of Pregnancy and Termination of Life in Newborns and Children Aged 1 to 12 Years, the child suffered extensive brain damage after being born at just 26 weeks. The report did not reveal whether the child was a boy or girl.
“As more and more became clear on the basis of medical examinations and in view of the child’s visible clinical deterioration, the parents asked the physician to terminate the child’s life,” the committee found.
The child developed severe epilepsy, a damaged immune system, cerebral visual impairment, and had no verbal abilities. Investigators concluded that doctors became “convinced that the child was suffering unbearably and without prospect of improvement.”
“In the course of the child’s short life, there was a complete lack of development or improvement. Every facet of ‘being human’ in terms of motor skills, behavior and personality was severely affected, and there would be no improvement,” the report stated.
The trend isn’t limited to Europe. More than a dozen American states now permit some form of assisted suicide, with several joining in recent years. Illinois legalized the practice in December, and New York followed in February. Both states allow doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients who have been given a prognosis of less than six months to live.
But the Netherlands has gone further than any American state, extending the practice to children as young as one year old. The government committee’s report on this first case under the new rules suggests authorities there see nothing wrong with what occurred.
