Doctors in the Netherlands killed a nearly 2-year-old child with severe brain damage as the country rolls out a new “termination of life” framework for young children.
Government investigators said that doctors who ended the life of a young child with developmental issues acted with “due care” after determining the child’s condition would not improve. The child had “extensive brain damage” after being born at just 26 weeks, the investigators said in a new government report on the killing.
“As more and more became clear on the basis of medical examinations and in view of the child’s visible clinical deterioration, the parents asked the physician to terminate the child’s life,” found the report from the Assessment Committee for Late Termination of Pregnancy and Termination of Life in Newborns and Children Aged 1 to 12 Years.
The report did not reveal the child’s gender.
The shocking killing comes as the Netherlands continues to loosen its guidelines for assisted suicide and ending the life of toddlers with severe medical conditions. The Netherlands legalized euthanasia for severely ill children between the ages of 1 and 12 in 2024. The killing scrutinized in the report, which occurred late last year, was the first under the expanded rules.
The New York Post first flagged the report.
The child developed severe epilepsy, a damaged immune system, cerebral visual impairment, and had no verbal abilities. Government investigators said that the doctors became “convinced that the child was suffering unbearably and without prospect of improvement.”
“In the course of the child’s short life, there was a complete lack of development or improvement. Every facet of ‘being human’ in terms of motor skills, behavior and personality was severely affected, and there would be no improvement,” the report found.
Assisted suicide is opposed by many conservatives and Christians across the world.
On Sunday, Pope Leo XIV spoke out against the practice during a visit to France.
“It is precisely in the name of this inalienable dignity of the human person that we must reject the temptation to cause death under the guise of false compassion,” he said. “What is legal is not necessarily moral.”
More than a dozen states now allow assisted suicide, with several joining in recent years. Illinois legalized the practice in December, and New York followed in February, allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to end the lives of those who are terminally ill and have been given a prognosis of less than six months to live.
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