Euthanasia Opponents React to Holland's New Law
By Laura Hershey (LauraHershey@compuserve.com)
When the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia, Dutch disability-rights groups remained mostly silent. Internationally, however, other activists are expressing grave concerns about the law's possible impact on people with disabilities throughout Europe and the world.
On April 10, 2001, the Dutch Senate voted 46 to 28 to approve legislation allowing doctors to kill patients under certain circumstances. The euthanasia must be performed with "due care," in response to a "voluntary and well-considered" request from a patient who sees "no other reasonable solution" to "lasting and unbearable" suffering. The patient's request may have been made years earlier, before incurring an illness or injury. There is no requirement that the patient be terminally ill.
Gregor Wolbring, a German biochemist living in Canada, and a leader in the international anti-euthanasia movement, points out that the new law has "only legalized something which was already in practice for a long time." However, Wolbring adds, the law allows physicians even greater freedom, which could compromise the the rights of disabled and older people. In the past, safeguards purportedly allowed euthanasia only for patients who were terminally ill and suffering untreatable physical pain. "But a lot of that was broken over time," says Wolbring. "Now you can also get euthanasia if you are emotionally having a problem, or if you are incurable. The safeguards they had ten or fifteen years ago, don't exist anymore."
Not Dead Yet
The law's lax requirements have drawn criticism from disability-rights advocates around the world. The U.S. group Not Dead Yet denounced the action. "The Dutch experience with euthanasia is best described as one of increasing carelessness and callousness over the years. The strict guidelines under which euthanasia was decriminalized for many years have been widely ignored, according to published reports in the Netherlands," said Stephen Drake, a research analyst for Not Dead Yet.[*] "In spite of admitted widespread abuses, only a handful of doctors have even been prosecuted for violating guidelines."
Not Dead Yet board member Carol Cleigh added, "Holland has shown us how easy it is for euthanasia to become institutionalized and routine. Nonterminal disabled adults and infants are euthanized routinely in Holland, often without consent."
Response from Holland?
Then why the lack of response from disability groups within Holland? "I think they are afraid to stir a debate," says Jeroen Breekveldt of the Dutch anarchist group Autonoom Politiek Infocentrum, which educates and organizes around anti-euthanasia and anti-eugenics issues. "Political dissent is not popular" in the Netherlands, he adds, "and might be bad for your image, or access to government money."
Wolbring attributes the inaction of Dutch disability groups to apathy, fueled by denial. "I don't think they saw the implications that it would be a problem for them eventually down the road," Wolbring says. "Just like the Jewish didn't want to believe that the Nazis could be that evil."
Other countries' disability groups are more worried. "The disability rights movement is highly concerned about the new developments in the area of euthanasia," says Ottmar Miles-Paul, Public Relations Officer of the German Network for Equal Rights of Disabled. "The history of the German Nazi regime has shown us to what extent such laws and technologies can be used against people who don't fit in the mainstream of society."
Concerns in Germany
German disability organizations are fighting similar developments, adds Miles-Paul "In Germany the pressure for disabled people and elderly people is growing immensely, to not be a burden on society, and to think about euthanasia," Miles-Paul says. He is worried that the recent Dutch action may build momentum for the pro-euthanasia movement. "For us it's much harder now to argue against euthanasia if our neighbour-country has legalised it," he says. "Therefore the pressure will grow on disabled and elderly people."
Wolbring sees the escalating euthanasia debate as symptomatic of modern society's tendency to "medicalize and commodify humans," and to see the disabled individual as "a resources allocation problem." He places part of the blame with the philosophical field of bioethics which, beginning in the 1970s, "was developed by people with a very medicalized, negative view of disability." The bioethics philosophy, according to Wolbring, has lent academic legitimacy to the movement toward euthanasia. "They have those articles out where a person can actually have a negative value of quality of life -- death is zero, and living with disability is below zero. It's actually in an academic framework, a mathematical formula. So if you have a disability, you are below zero, your life is worse than death. And then death is, therefore, an improvement."
Erika Feyerabend, of the German anti-bioethics group Bioskop, says that in Germany, "there will never be legaization like in Netherlands." But she adds, "the movement for assisted suicide is getting stronger" throughout Europe. Proposals to legalized euthanasia, based on "the so-called Dutch model," are currently being considered in Belgium and Switzerland, according to Feyerabend.
Over the past decade disability-rights groups, particularly in North America, have begun campaigning against assisted suicide and euthanasia. Many activists see these practices as dangerous to people with disabilities, because they may create a double standard in which healthy nondisabled people seeking suicide are offered support and counseling, while people with disabilities and health problems are seen as "better off dead." Also, many disability-rights advocates argue that it is wrong offer death as a solution to people whose problems stem largely from an unsupportive, inaccessible society. As long as support services and other necessary resources are still unavailable to many disabled people, these activists say, euthanasia should not be an option.
[*] "Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in the Netherlands: a Report to the
House Judiciary Sub-Committee on the Constitution, Executive Summary," in
Issues of Law and Medicine, 01-05-1999
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