Assisting in a suicide of another person has been legal in the Netherlands for more than 20 years and the Dutch experience is repeatedly cited as the way forward in the UK. However, time and again reports show abuses of the Dutch law.
Dutch Penal Code Articles 293 and 294 make both euthanasia and assisted suicide illegal. However, as a result of various court cases, Doctors who directly kill patients or help patients kill themselves will not be prosecuted as long as they follow certain guidelines.
(Click here to read the guidelines)
Since 1981, the guidelines controlling assisted suicide have been interpreted by the Dutch Courts and Royal Dutch Medical Association in ever-broadening terms.
As a result of the ‘expanding’ law, Eugéne Sutorius, a leader of NVVE (Nederlandse Vereniging voor een Vrijwillig Levenseinde), a euthanasia lobby group in the Netherlands, is leading a new group of academics who are demanding the legalisation of euthanasia for people who are simply ‘tired of life’.
The group has launched a petition campaign whereby they hope to gather 40,000 signatures which is enough to have the issue debated in the Dutch parliament based on their ‘citizen’s initiative’ legislation. The petition is asking the Dutch legislature to allow assistance in a suicide for people who are over the age of 70 and ‘tired of life’.
It is reported that a former Dutch minister and feminist Hédy d’Ancona said the right to choose one’s time of death is a natural extension of her lifelong battle for emancipation.
Dutch neurologist Dick Swaab said that death should be approached more straightforwardly than we do now. He said that ‘throughout the animal kingdom, individuals are simply replaced, rather than patched up endlessly.’
Legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide for people who are ‘tired of living’ is also being promoted by Dr Philip Nitschke, an Australian humanist who is the leader of pro-euthanasia group Exit International.
In May 2009, Dr Nitschke, who says he was the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, voluntary, lethal injection, said it is time for Britain and others to heed growing calls for choice about dying, and allow access to effective suicide drugs.
Commenting on the NVVE campaign, Wesley J. Smith, a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and a special Consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Culture, wrote:
‘Once a society decides that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering, that which is deemed ‘acceptable suffering’ will continue to expand until just about any category of suicidal person will eventually qualify.
‘Talk about returning to the bad old days of social Darwinism! This is the moral of the story: We are a logical species. Once we accept a premise or a principle, we take it to where it naturally leads. Hence, once the door is opened to assisted suicide, the license will continue to expand until you end up with far more than that for which you originally bargained,’ he concluded.