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Draft legislation that would permit euthanasia was submitted to the
Dutch parliament by the coalition government last week. If the law is enacted,
as is widely expected, Dutch doctors will be the first in the world to have
the state’s permission to end a patient’s life.

Under the law, doctors can end a patient’s life under strictly controlled
conditions. The patient must make a ‘well-considered’ request for euthanasia.
Doctors must provide a detailed account of the patient’s circumstances by
means of a 28-point check list and must notify the coroner that they have
administered euthanasia.

Although officially illegal in the Netherlands, euthanasia accounts
for an estimated 2 per cent of deaths in the Netherlands each year. The
government’s proposals set the practice on a firmer footing. Although doctors
who carry out euthanasia face a maximum 12-year sentence, in practice they
have avoided prosecution by following similar informal guidelines. Under
the draft legislation, doctors who fail, in the view of a court, to comply
with the stipulated conditions, would also be liable to a 12-year sentence.

The Dutch justice minister, Ernst Hirsch-Ballin, said the proposals
struck a delicate balance between the government’s duty to protect life
and the individual’s right to die with dignity. But the initiative received
a lukewarm response from the medical profession and a Dutch right-to-die
group.

The Royal Dutch Medical Association said that the publication of the
guidelines was a step forward. But the association’s vice-president, Raymond
van de Velde, said he was disappointed that doctors would still be at risk
of prosecution. ‘A doctor who feels compelled to terminate a patient’s life
still risks being considered a criminal,’ he said.

Pit Bakker, chairwoman of the Netherlands Association for Voluntary
Euthanasia, said the government proposals were ‘extremely confusing’. She
also regretted that the government had not chosen the more ‘straightforward’
approach of legalising euthanasia without attaching such stringent conditions.

Hirsch-Ballin and the health minister, Hans Simons, said in a letter
to parliament that the government had a responsibility to protect human
life ‘even in its vulnerable final phase. But the government should also
take into account a patient’s wish to die with dignity and to curtail unbearable
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In opinion polls more than 80 per cent of the Dutch public support an
individual’s right to die.