Dutch court: Euthanasia no longer requires a doctor's order

A Dutch appeals court has cleared a man charged with assisting his 99-year-old mother to commit suicide in a case that could expand the country’s euthanasia laws.

The Netherlands legalized physician-assisted suicide in 2002. But Albert Heringa helped his mother die in 2008 by overdosing on medication. Last week, judges in the city of Arnhem ruled Heringa faced either obeying the law or following “unwritten moral duty” to help his mother meet her desire for a “painless, peaceful, and dignified death.” Heringa would have experienced “life-long feelings of guilt” if he hadn’t helped his mother die, the judges added.

A lower court convicted Heringa in 2013, but didn’t punish him for the crime. Heringa appealed the ruling, and euthanasia advocates have applauded the higher court’s decision.

“This is a step in the direction we want to go,” said Fiona Zonneveld of the Dutch Association for Voluntary Euthanasia. “Many people who consider their lives completed want to be helped by their loved ones.”

Prosecutors may appeal the decision to a higher court.

“Assisting suicide according to the conditions laid out in the euthanasia law is and remains, in the view of the prosecution office, exclusively a task for a doctor,” they said in a statement.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) legal counsel Rob Clarke said the court ruling demonstrates the “slippery slope” of legalizing euthanasia. In the Netherlands, 2,000 people died through euthanasia in 2005. Last year that number reached 5,000 and could rise to 6,000 by the end of this year, he said.

Originally, countries passed euthanasia laws to allow people with terminal illnesses to choose assisted suicide at the end of their lives. But laws have since broadened to include physical and mental ailments and written requests for euthanasia at a later point in life. And some may feel pressure to end their lives early if they see themselves as a financial burden.

“It just opens up so many difficulties,” Clarke said.

Currently, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium are the only European countries to legalize assisted suicide. But the United Kingdom and France are considering laws to legalize the practice. Clarke said he hopes those countries will consider the rising euthanasia rates and broadened laws in other countries as a warning against following their example.

The Netherlands’ Royal Dutch Medical Association has already expanded its euthanasia laws to include babies whose treatment is considered “medically futile.” And other Dutch laws have enabled traveling euthanasia doctors, Clarke said.

Though euthanasia advocates tout an image of assisted suicide similar to American Brittany Maynard’s death, it’s “very much not the majority of cases,” Clarke said. Rather, most cases bear more similarity to the 2012 killing of Tom Mortier’s mother in Belgium for “untreatable depression.” Mortier was not informed of his mother’s decision until the day after her death. Oncologist Wim Distelmans killed Godelieva De Troyer after her own physician denied her request. Mortier and ADF filed a complaint last year with the European Court of Human Rights.

“It illustrates all of the things that are wrong about these laws,” Clarke said. “When you make this kind of legal decision you’re opening up a much bigger box.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.