Posted on 11/18/2023 8:22:28 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The vast majority of people living in the Netherlands support expanding assisted suicide for older citizens who are not facing a serious or life-threatening illness.
The English-language Dutch news outlet NL Times reported last week that a recent poll conducted by Kieskompas of nearly 200,000 people found that 80% of the Dutch supported enabling elderly people who feel they've reached the end of their lives to obtain assisted suicide. In other words, a supermajority of respondents favor allowing assisted suicide regardless of whether the person requesting it is terminally ill.
While a supermajority said they support expanding assisted suicide, 10% of those surveyed oppose expanding eligibility for legal assisted suicide to include those who merely think their useful lives have come to an end, while another 10% did not express an opinion.
Kieskompas found no noticeable disparities in support for the proposed expansion of assisted suicide among age, education status or gender.
The poll was conducted in response to the European nation’s Legislature considering a bill that would allow people over the age of 75 to have medical help to end their lives if they felt they had reached the end of their useful lives.
If enacted, the bill would still require individuals over age 75 to undergo a six-month process before they could medically end their lives, which would include meeting with an “end-of-life counselor” on at least three separate occasions.
Wesley J. Smith, author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism, denounced the results of the poll in an op-ed for National Review, viewing it as an example of a slippery slope.
“Once a society embraces killing as an answer to suffering, the ‘suffering’ that qualifies for termination never stops expanding,” wrote Smith. “Since lethal-injection euthanasia became decriminalized — and then, formally legalized — the killable caste has expanded from the terminally ill, to the chronically ill, to people with disabilities, to babies born with serious medical conditions, to the mentally ill, etc., etc., etc.”
Smith went on to ask, “why should eligibility be age-directed” and “why not open the death option to younger people” because “doesn’t every suicidal person believe their life is completed?”
“Euthanasia corrupts public morality and the human conscience. The same progression into the culture of death will happen here if we don’t resist the siren song of ‘death with dignity,’” he added.
In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia, following nearly three decades of debate and despite protests from Christian groups.
The 2001 law had several restrictions, such as the procedure only being allowed for patients suffering from constant and incurable pain as well as a mandated second opinion. Additionally, euthanasia was only permitted for patients determined to have a sound mind.
According to a report by DutchNews published in April, more than 8,700 people died by euthanasia in the Netherlands last year, representing a 14% increase from the year before.
Although most of the euthanasia requests came from cancer patients, 288 of those euthanized were suffering from dementia, a 34% increase from 2021, according to DutchNews.
Why don’t they all they just kill themselves and be done with it?!
The world of Soylent Green come to reality. Where has Western Civ gone wrong? The muzzles aren’t offing themselves. Wake up Dutchies!
The Dutch are to culture what pope Frank is to the Catholic Church.
THEY ARE ALWAYS FIRST IN ANY KIND OF DEPRAVITY THAT THEY CAN THINK DESEVES THEIR SUPPORT.
Is forcing Dutch farmers out of business one of their methods of assisted suicide?
ie We’ll help you die whether you want to or not.
Once Hitler talked Germans into handing over their sick, deformed or mentally ill relatives over to him for disposal he knew he could get them to do almost any other horrible things.
Assistance will soon turn into coercion.
They are intent on suiciding their whole country and culture. What the hell happened to these people?
They have forgotten about God.
Same as Canada. The collapse of Christianity for the Heritage population combined with non-Christian immigration.
Regards,
Exactly.
And this is a freakin’ nation we fought a world war to save?
Good God.
Actually the T4 program was the only time the German people resisted Hitler.
As long he was killing off elderly and sick Jews it was ok.
It was when he went after non Jews that Germans protested.
Still you’re right.
He killed off about 70,000 in a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust.
Obviously a moral problem but also you could look at it as a natural result of the constant drumbeat of “crisis” news about climate and the geopolitical situation. If a person does not have a very strong moral foundation it is quite easy to get sucked into the vortex of despair that there are “too many people” so any means to reduce that total is seen as a good thing. Of course if these people were questioned as to who they would suggest for life termination, it would come down to “whoever wants to die” which tends to reduce the shock value of holding such opinions. “They don’t want to live, it’s not my problem” becomes a cop-out position.
By the way, did you know the leading cause of death in the Netherlands? Clogged arteries. Also, when tulips are very close together.
For some older citizens old age isn’t living it’s existing with pain or other issues options are better than a slow death.
Why do you assume foreign polls are any more accurate than ours are?
Note to the Dutch: You have the same electronic voting machines we do. I’m thinking for the same reason. What you don’t have, and desperately need, is your own Trump.
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