Netherlands Soon to Be First Country to Legalize Physician- Assisted Suicide

By Liz Townsend

After years of officially illegal but largely unprosecuted euthanasia deaths, the Netherlands moved one step closer to becoming the first country to enshrine physician-assisted suicide in law. The lower house of the Dutch parliament overwhelmingly approved legal euthanasia November 28 on a 104-40 vote. The bill now moves to the Senate for final approval and is expected to become law next year.

When this bill becomes law, the country will be the first in the world to legally sanction the physician-assisted killing of its citizens, although Belgium, Switzerland, and Colombia unofficially "tolerate" euthanasia, the London Times reported.

Opponents voiced their concern that killing will become the norm.

"Once killing a patient is accepted as a solution for one problem, the doors are open for killing in hundreds of situations," Dr. Karel Gunning of the anti-euthanasia Dutch Doctors League told the Chicago Tribune. "Killing will become the normal way to solve problems, instead of caring."

The Dutch law is based on guidelines developed by the Royal Dutch Medical Association. Its provisions allow a patient facing "unremitting and unbearable suffering" - - but not necessarily a terminal illness - - to ask a physician for "the termination of life in a medically appropriate fashion." The physician is supposed to ensure that the patient's request is voluntary, conclude that no "reasonable alternative solution" can be found, and consult with another doctor who has examined the patient.

The bill also establishes five regional review committees that will examine each euthanasia death and determine if the physician acted with "due care." A doctor can also act if the patient has declared in writing - - in what is called an "advance directive" - - that he or she would want to die if incapacitated.

The bill originally included a provision that would allow children as young as 12 to choose physician-assisted suicide for themselves, without the consent of their parents. After a storm of objections from many people, including even euthanasia supporters, the bill's sponsors raised the age limit to 16 in July. Left unmentioned in many accounts is that the current bill still allows parents to choose physician-assisted suicide for their 12- to 15-year-old children!

Thousands of people are estimated to die from euthanasia in the Netherlands each year, according to government figures. Since 1973, Dutch courts have either acquitted or given a slap on the wrist to doctors charged with euthanizing their patients, even though there had never been a law authorizing physician-assisted suicide. The government issued guidelines in 1997 that referred euthanasia cases to review boards rather than prosecutors, according to Reuters.

In the United States, only Oregon allows euthanasia. Attempts have been made in other states to legalize the practice, most recently with an unsuccessful referendum in Maine November 7, but voters and legislatures have defeated these measures each time. (See story on Maine referendum on page 10.)

Anti-euthanasia groups in other European countries worry that the step of legalization will increase calls for similar laws in their nations. "The next pressure will be for it to come to England and we will have our work cut out," Dr. Peggy Norris, chair of the British group Alert, told the Ananova news service. "No doubt our anti-life or pro-death people will latch on to this. None of us would be safe if we were to get a pro- euthanasia law here."

"Elderly people would feel under pressure to ask for their lives to be ended," she continued. "The propaganda would be that they can't do anything and they are dependent on the state. There would also undoubtedly be pressure from some families saying people have had their time and it's time to go. It would be very, very dangerous."Widespread euthanasia already occurs in Belgium, where, just like in the Netherlands, the practice is officially illegal but common. A study of registered deaths, published in the prestigious British journal The Lancet, revealed that one in ten deaths in the country were caused by the direct intervention of a doctor or by withholding of treatment, the BBC reported.

The researchers sent questionnaires to doctors who signed death certificates during the first four months of 1998. The answers were used to calculate an estimate for the entire year.

While 1.3% of the total number of deaths in Belgium occurred when a patient expressly asked the physician to assist in suicide, the study found, fully 3.2%1,796 peopledied by a dose of lethal drugs given without their consent. The researchers also estimated that 3,261 deaths - - 5.8% - - were caused when treatment was withheld with the direct intent to cause death.

The spread of euthanasia in Europe concerns many, including officials of the Roman Catholic Church. "This is an absurd decision that goes against the grain of thousands of years of European civilization and tramples the dignity of the human person," Fr. Gino Concetti, senior moral theologian at the Vatican, told Reuters. "By making this choice, the Dutch parliament has opened a breach in the political and social order of the countries of the European Union and in other places where the issue is still being considered."

"Life is inviolable," Fr. Concetti insisted. "So any law that destroys it or approves of its destruction is inhumane."