Mercy Killing in the Netherlands: Euthanasia or Eugenics?
ChronWatch - December 20 2004 - Cinnamon Stillwell

In the wake of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh's murder and the ensuing backlash against Islamic extremism, the Netherlands has garnered an unusual amount of media attention. But there's another story unfolding in Holland
that the media has barely taken notice of, and its ramifications are equally monumental. It seems that those who criticize Islam are not alone in fearing for their lives.

This past year, it was quietly announced that Holland had approved euthanasia for children under twelve. This news alone was unsettling, but then last month came the disturbing disclosure that not only had euthanasia been approved for infants, but had in fact been practiced by doctors for some time. In other words, first adults and now children and infants are slowly being eliminated in the name of "compassion."

The practice has been approved for terminally-ill infants, or those whose suffering is deemed intolerable. Presumably, this includes babies that are premature, developmentally disabled, or physically deformed. This is in marked contrast to the United States, where such infants are kept alive against all odds, using expensive, cutting-edge technology. But the Dutch have apparently decided that these lives are expendable. How long before other "undesirables" are slated for termination?

To get an idea of the scope of the problem, Wesley J. Smith, writing for The Weekly Standard, cited a 1997 study published in the British medical journal, the Lancet:

According to the report, doctors were killing approximately 8 percent of all infants who died each year in the Netherlands. That amounts to approximately 80-90 per year. Of these, one-third would have lived more than a month. At least 10-15 of these killings involved infants who did not require life-sustaining treatment to stay alive. The study found that a shocking 45 percent of neo-natologists and 31 percent of pediatricians who responded to questionnaires had killed infants.

It's difficult to imagine how a society can justify the snuffing out of human life at such a rate, but in the Netherlands, this kind of thinking has become par for the course.

If one looks at history, it becomes clear just where the practice can lead. In Nazi Germany euthanasia became an obsession, eventually resulting in the belief in eugenics or the achievement of a genetically "superior" race. Beginning with the mentally and physically disabled, 200,000 of whom were systematically murdered between 1939 and 1945, euthanasia later became part of the Nazis' final solution. Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Communists, German
dissenters, and others were experimented on and finally targeted for extermination under the rationale that they were "inferior."

The growth of euthanasia in the Netherlands shares a similarly frightening connotation. While the Dutch undoubtedly think of themselves as light years away from the monsters of Nazi Germany, they may have more in common than they think. For what does it say about a society when its weakest members are not only unprotected, but wiped out? When human life is so callously disregarded, human beings become nothing more than animals, and even there they may have some competition.

Putting aside the question of whether it is possible to ascertain the wishes of an infant or a small child, is it not a doctor's duty, as the Hippocratic Oath stipulates, to "do no harm"? And who decides who will live or die? Mostly, the burden falls on the medical establishment, who instead of doing no harm have placed themselves in the position of executioner. With no higher authority to weigh in, doctors are playing God and this deity is not a merciful one.

But not all of Holland's doctors have gone along with the plan. Alarmed by their colleagues' growing inhumanity, dissenters among the medical establishment formed "The World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Life" in Holland in 1974. Seeing euthanasia as an outgrowth of Nazi ideology, fused with the United Nations' population control policies in the 1970's, over 70,000 doctors chose to adhere to the Declaration on
Euthanasia:

Euthanasia, that is the act of commission or omission with the deliberate intention of ending the life of a patient, even at the patient's own request or at the request of close relatives, is unethical. This does not prevent the physician from respecting the desire of a patient to allow the natural process of death to follow its course in the terminal phase of sickness.

Some will argue that concern over euthanasia belongs exclusively to the realm of religion. The Catholic Church has indeed written extensively on the subject, because of their belief in the sanctity of all human life. But this is an issue that should concern us all.

Those who seek to defend the mentally ill and the disabled have a serious stake in the matter, being as they would likely be on the receiving end of such "mercy killings." This is why the case of Terry Schiavo in Florida (whose husband has been trying to pull the plug on her for years against the wishes of her family) and the so-called "right-to-die" movement in the United States can count the disabled among their opponents. And as we have seen with the Nazi analogy, all members of a multi-ethnic society should be concerned with the attempts to deem certain groups "inferior" and unworthy of life.

Many on the left have difficulty condemning euthanasia because they see it as part and parcel of the other "life issues" they support, such as abortion. While the connection is undeniable, it's possible to take a stand against one while supporting the other. For whatever our views, we must not let ourselves slide into the cold, calculating barbarity of euthanasia. As it is, the Dutch are plunging headlong down that slippery slope and where it will end, no one knows.

This article appeared in ple-news, digest number 554. (December 21, 2004).

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