The Dutch government is preparing to regulate euthanasia for children between 1 and 12 years of age whose death is inevitable and who suffer unbearable pain, which is estimated to affect between five and ten minors a year, the Minister of Health announced this Friday, Ernst Kuipers.
The measure will be adopted by regulation thinking of that “small group” of minors “for whom palliative care options are not enough to alleviate their suffering” and who have “an illness or disorder so serious that death is inevitable” and expected “in the foreseeable future,” Kuipers said in a letter to Parliament.
In his letter, the minister insisted that assisted death will be possible “when it is the only reasonable alternative for a doctor to end the child’s desperate and unbearable suffering.”
[Hourmann, primer médico condenado en España por la eutanasia: “Lo perdí todo menos mi dignidad”]
Mark Rutte’s government expects to publish the regulation this year and, some time after its entry into force, an evaluation of its application will be carried out.
In the Netherlands, the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia on April 1, 2002, active aid in dying is now legal for children over 12 years of age who can give their consent, and for babies under one year of age with parental consent.
But it was Belgium, in February 2014, the pioneer in allowing minors of no age limit, but capable of discernment, to request euthanasia.
[“Respiro, pero no vivo”: el adiós de la joven holandesa que pidió una eutanasia tras ser violada]
The number of people dying in the Netherlands with the help of a euthanasia procedure increased by 13.7% last year, to a total of 8,720 caseswhich represents 5.1% of the total deaths registered in the country in 2022, according to figures from the regional euthanasia review committees (RTE, in its acronym in Dutch).
The number of euthanasia deaths used to rise by around 10% a year, mostly involving people with cancer, although last year there were also 288 cases of euthanasia in people with dementia, 35% more than in 2021.
