Netherlands insists disabled toddler’s euthanization handled appropriately

A government-appointed Dutch review committee recently determined that doctors used what the committee described as due care when euthanizing a nearly 2-year-old toddler. The child’s sex wasn’t disclosed in the review. The committee said the death met the conditions of a 2024 expansion of the Netherlands’ assisted suicide law, which allowed children to be killed if several doctors agreed they were experiencing unbearable and irreversible suffering. After several doctors reached that conclusion in the child’s case, the child’s parents agreed to kill him or her through a deep sedation process. However, the report noted that several doctors said a different medication could have helped control epileptic seizures the child was experiencing. They concluded that though the child’s condition was irreversible, he or she was not suffering continuously.

The child was born prematurely at 26 weeks gestation and suffered brain damage, according to the report. The child was diagnosed with spastic cerebral palsy, infantile epileptic spasms syndrome, and his or her vision was likely impaired. He or she had seizures several times a day, and also had difficulty sleeping, coughing, swallowing, and clearing mucus. The child cried and experienced shortness of breath during epileptic spasms, according to the report. Doctors said the child’s brain development remained equivalent to that of a 6-week-old baby.

“Every facet of ‘being human’ in terms of motor skills, behavior and personality was severely affected, and there would be no improvement,” the committee stated in its review.

According to the report, the child would likely have died at a young age, had he or she not been euthanized. However, the report never specifically stated that the child was terminally ill or actively dying. It is unclear whether the child was the same one referenced in a previous government report on the first-ever child euthanasia death under the 2024 expansions. That earlier report said the child who was killed was terminally ill.

Dig deeper: Read my report on the death of the first child killed under the Netherlands’ expanded euthanasia law.