Last year, a one-year-old child in the Netherlands was euthanized. A government committee reviewed the killing and determined that proper procedures had been followed.
The committee's name is the Assessment Committee for Late-Term Abortion and Termination of Life in Newborns and Children Ages 1 to 12. That is not a parody. That is an actual government body, and its job is to review cases where doctors end the lives of children and determine whether the paperwork was in order.
The committee issued a lengthy statement defending what it called the "termination of life" — their phrase. The child had been born premature at twenty-six weeks and diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy, visual impairment, and epileptic seizures that didn't respond to medication. Doctors had assessed the developmental age at six weeks. The committee concluded that "all facets of 'being human' — regarding motor skills, behavior, and personality — were severely impaired and were not going to improve," and that the child was "suffering unbearably and without prospect of relief." The case was forwarded to the Public Prosecution Service. No charges are expected.
Professor Eduard Verhagen, a pediatric palliative care specialist at UMCG in Groningen, praised the decision. "Many physicians and parents will benefit from this in the future," he said. The word he chose was "benefit."
The Netherlands legalized voluntary euthanasia for adults in April 2002. At the time, supporters insisted the practice would remain narrow — terminal adults, unbearable suffering, no other options. In February 2024, the country extended it to children between the ages of 1 and 12. Dutch Health Minister S.T.M. Hermans confirmed the first case in a June 22 letter to the Netherlands House of Representatives: "At the end of 2025, the committee received a first notification of the termination of life of a child between the ages of 1 and 12."
The government projected these cases would occur fewer than ten times per year. That projection is supposed to be reassuring.
Belgium has no minimum age for euthanasia. Colombia permits it for children as young as six. The Netherlands drew the line at one. These are the countries American progressives cite when they talk about "compassionate" end-of-life policy.
The clinical language is doing a lot of heavy lifting. "Termination of life" instead of killing. "Unbearable suffering without prospect of relief" instead of a sick child who needed more help than the system wanted to provide. A committee with a name so long it takes two lines to print, designed to make bureaucratic review sound like moral authority. Strip away the euphemisms and what remains is a government that built a formal process for ending the lives of toddlers and then congratulated itself on following procedure.
Every expansion of euthanasia law has followed the same pattern. The initial proposal is narrow and sympathetic — terminal adults making a free choice. The boundaries move. The age drops. The definition of "unbearable suffering" stretches. The committee reviews and approves. And each time, the people who warned about the slope were told they were being hysterical.
A professor said physicians will "benefit" from this precedent. A committee determined that all facets of "being human" were impaired. A government minister sent a letter. The child was almost two years old.
