The alarming spread of child euthanasia

A few weeks ago the Dutch parliament announced that euthanasia will be licensed for children between the ages of one and 12, for cases involving ‘such a serious illness or disorder that death is inevitable, and the death of these children is expected in the foreseeable future’. The coverage of this latest development was eerily muted, considering the enormity of what had just been communicated; namely, that a European liberal democracy had deemed it appropriate for seriously sick infants and primary school-aged children to receive lethal injections.

Meanwhile, over in Canada, two months prior to the Netherlands’ latest decree, a parliamentary committee recommended that Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) should be extended to ‘mature minors’. 

This Report of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, which is alarming to read and received even less publicity than the Netherlands, recommended that ‘the government of Canada amend the eligibility criteria for MAID set out in the Criminal Code to include minors’, with the stipulation that, without lethal intervention, their death should be ‘reasonably foreseeable’.