Free Republic

The number of euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands rose significantly in 2009 compared with 2008. There were reportedly 200 more deaths under the law, but pro-life advocates say those numbers are likely lowball estimates given the underreporting in the Dutch system. The Dutch News indicates approximately 2,500 people died via euthanasia in 2009, but the actual number is unknown because the government estimates about 20 percent of cases are not reported. The new government figures also include six registered cases of euthanasia on elderly patients with senile dementia, all of whom were supposedly in the early stages and able to...

NIJ BEETS, Netherlands, August 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A woman has been arrested for killing her four newborn children and packing their remains away in suitcases in the Netherlands - a country where infanticide is legal as long a doctor administers the dose. According to Radio Netherlands Worldwide, the unnamed 25-year-old woman was a well-known and liked dentist’s assistant in the rural town of Nij Beets, in the Dutch province of Friesland. She managed to keep the infanticides secret for years until her Wednesday arrest, and remains now in police custody. Police were tipped off by a suspicious neighbor who...

The tragedy of Terri Schiavo’s very public suffering is representative of a much larger push for medicalized and legal sanctioning of death on demand for others. If you think I’m exaggerating, read on. Recently, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported that two physicians authorized the abortion of a late-term unborn child because there was “a substantial risk the child would be seriously handicapped.” What was this horrible “handicap?” Surely, it must have been medically so serious that men trained to save lives were prepared to engage in what, under British law, could be considered an act of unlawful killing. Not much horror...

Bureaucracy has trumped morality in the Netherlands. How else can one explain a country where, when doctors admit publicly that they commit eugenic infanticide, the leaders' response is not to prosecute them for murder, but instead to urge that guidelines be created under which future baby killings can openly take place? The "Groningen Protocol" — named after a pediatric hospital which admittedly permits doctors to end the lives of babies born with disabilities or terminal conditions — seeks to normalize infanticide by bringing the practice out of the shadows and into the light of day. Under this thinking, it isn't...