Some 650 newborn infants are euthanised in The Netherlands every year, it has emerged.
According to the Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG), despite current legal parameters around euthanasia, it is now accepted practice for a doctor to terminate the life of a newborn where that doctor identifies suffering on the part of the infant or where unavoidable natural death proves too distressing for parents to witness.
Though euthanasia in The Netherlands has been legal since 2002, the practice is confined in law to those aged 18 or older. However, since 2005, any doctor taken the decision to euthanise a child is not prosecuted if said practitioner can show he or she adhered to the Groningen Protocol, a set of medical guidelines drafted in 2004 by Dr Eduard Verhagen, a vocal supporter of euthanasia, and a team of like-minded physicians.
Under the terms of the Groningen Protocol, a doctor avoids prosecution in the termination of an infant’s life if five criteria are met: the diagnosis and prognosis must be certain; hopeless and unbearable suffering must be present; the diagnosis, prognosis, and unbearable suffering must be confirmed by at least one independent doctor; both parents must give informed consent, and the procedure must be performed in accordance with the accepted medical standard.
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 on the issues of suffering and euthanasia, Dr Verhagen advocated euthanasia not only for newborns facing imminent death, but those who would survive with proper treatment but “who experience what parents and medical experts deem to be unbearable suffering… this group includes patients who are not dependent on intensive medical treatment but for whom a very poor quality of life, associated with sustained suffering, is predicted. For example, a child with the most serious form of spina bifida [and] infants who have survived thanks to intensive care but for whom it becomes clear after intensive treatment has been completed that the quality of life will be very poor and for whom there is no hope of improvement.”
While continuing to defend newborn euthanasia, Dr Verhagen has since conceded that diagnosing a newborn as ‘suffering’ is “complex”.
“It may feel pain and discomfort, but suffering is a complex social and psychological phenomenon without scientifically validated criteria,” he said.
