Euthanasia for Toddlers?!

In the Netherlands, a doctor ended the life of a disabled two-year-old. In Canada, medical assistance in dying now accounts for one in every 20 deaths. On this episode, we ask, are we headed down a deadly slippery slope? Welcome to American Covered, I'm Chris Chappell. So considering this episode's subject matter, I would estimate that our chances of getting demonetized are hovering somewhere around, well, I don't know, 100%. Still, I think it's important to talk about. So if you want us to be able to keep making episodes on controversial topics, consider heading over to AmericanCovered.tv and becoming a subscriber. Alright, so let me give you some quick background. The Netherlands legalized euthanasia for adults in 2002. Since 2005, doctors have been allowed to end the lives of newborns under something called the Groningen Protocol. While technically illegal, Dutch authorities refrain from prosecuting if, 1. There's the presence of hopeless and unbearable suffering. 2. The parents consent to the termination of life. 3. Medical consultations have taken place. And 4. The termination is carefully executed. In 2024, this was expanded to include children between the ages of 1 and 12. A Dutch review committee received its first report of a child in that age group being put to death last year. And they published their findings, which you can see here. The child in question was born very premature, at around 26 weeks, while the parents were abroad. The patient suffered serious complications, including multiple infections, and an MRI later showed extensive brain damage. Cerebral palsy, visual impairment, and a severe form of childhood epilepsy that's been difficult to treat also affected the child. At almost two years old, the child's development age was estimated to be that of a six-week-old baby. That's pretty heartbreaking. Obviously, this child would be dependent on caregivers for life. That's hard for the parents, not to mention the poor kid. But there are some things in the report that may raise some eyebrows. The rules require that, before terminating a life, the doctor has to get a second opinion from an independent medical professional. So he did. Several independent doctors from outside the region looked at the case, and they said no to death. These doctors noted that at the time, there was no continuous unbearable suffering. The epilepsy was accompanied by significant discomfort, but the seizures were not continuous. Their conclusion was that reasonable alternative solutions existed, like medication, that could potentially get the seizures under control. To be fair to the doctor, he did try the medication they recommended, but it caused more side effects, so they stopped it. He eventually went to another doctor for another opinion, and that doctor finally said yes. In the end, the child was almost 24 months old at the time of the termination of life. But here's the part that really matters. The doctor told the committee that the child's suffering wasn't just about the seizures. To quote the report, the physician was of the opinion that the child was suffering unbearably, without prospect of improvement, and still would have been, even if the epilepsy had been brought under control. Ok, hold on. Let's imagine they were able to treat the seizures. What then would be counted as unbearable suffering? Well, one of the factors the report listed was the very limited possibilities for the child to have positive life experiences. Well, that's certainly one way of looking at it. Are positive experiences a requirement to live? Or more to the point, does a lack of your own positive experiences give someone else the right to end your life? Who defines positive experiences? I mean, after I record this, I'm just going to go to my tiny cramped apartment, eat an expired can of tuna I got from the dollar store, and watch some boring show on Tubi. But I want to live, dammit! Live! Now you might be thinking, this is just one tragic case we've been talking about. So what? It's not like euthanasia is becoming super widespread, right? Well, the Netherlands has the highest share of deaths by euthanasia in the world. And right behind it is our neighbor to the north. Canada legalized what it calls medical assistance in dying, or MADE, in 2016. In 2024, the Canadian government reported 16,499 MADE deaths. That's about 5% of all deaths in Canada for that year. To put that into perspective, here in the US, there were 15,364 gun-related homicides in 2024. On a per capita basis, Canada's MADE rate was around 9 times the US gun homicide rate. Before anyone says it, no, I'm not saying assisted death is the same thing as murder. I'm just talking about scale. Something sold to Canadians as a rare last resort is now one of the most common ways Canadians die. To be fair, most of those people were terminally ill. The majority had cancer, and the median age was 78. Only about 4% were what Canada calls Track 2 patients, people whose deaths were not reasonably foreseeable. But that's the category that's growing fastest. Track 2 deaths jumped from about 17% in a single year from 2023 to 2024. Now, the people who support assisted death say the slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy. But I'm starting to think the slippery slope may be less of a fallacy and more of an iron law of the universe. Originally, MADE was intended for people whose deaths were reasonably foreseeable. In 2021, Canada's parliament expanded it to people who weren't dying at all. That same law scrapped the 10-day waiting period for terminal patients. In Ontario in 2023, 65 people received MADE on the same day they asked for it. The next step is applying MADE to people whose only condition is a mental illness. That step has been delayed until March of next year. Before you think this is just a Canadian or European thing, assisted suicide is now legal in a growing number of US states, including New York, where I live. Now, supporters say the safeguards work. But several cases out of Canada have shown just how badly they can fail. Donna Duncan was a retired nurse in British Columbia. In 2020, she got a concussion in a car accident. Then COVID hit, and her treatment was put on hold for months. Her family doctor noted her low mood, anxiety, and depression. She lost weight. Tests couldn't find a physical cause for her pain. Her doctor refused to approve her for MADE, and said her mental health needed treatment first. So she found other assessors, who approved her anyway. Her daughters had her legally held in an emergency medical unit because they were worried about her. Doctors there assessed her and found her competent. The next day, she was transferred to another hospital, where again, doctors cleared her as competent. She was released at 4.30pm, and by 9.30pm that night, she was dead. Then there was the case of Katrin Mentler. She's a Vancouver woman who suffers from chronic depression. In 2023, when she was only 37 years old, she went to Vancouver General Hospital because she was feeling suicidal and wanted help. She says a clinician told her there would be long waits to see a psychiatrist, and that the healthcare system was broken. She was then asked a jarring question. Have you considered MADE? The health authority said MADE was brought up to assess her suicide risk, not as a suggestion. But even if that's the case, that's sort of an odd thing to say, isn't it? And then there's a woman the Ontario government only identifies as Mrs. B. In 2025, the Chief Coroner's MADE Death Review Committee published a report on cases where MADE was provided the same day or the day after it was requested. One of them was Mrs. B. She was in her 80s and had complications after heart surgery. Her husband was caring for her at home, and he was struggling. At first, she asked about MADE, but when an assessor came to evaluate her, she said she changed her mind. She ultimately chose to receive palliative care, citing her personal and religious values. The next day, her husband took her to the hospital. Staff noted he was experiencing caregiver burnout. Her palliative care doctor applied for her to get into hospice, but she was denied because she was in stable condition. So her husband requested an urgent MADE assessment. A second assessor found her eligible. The first assessor objected, seeing no urgency, and raised the possibility of coercion because of the husband's burnout. That assessor wanted to meet with Mrs. B. again. The request was refused. A third assessor was brought in, who agreed with the second one, and Mrs. B. was dead by the end of the day. One member of the review committee, Dr. Ramona Coel, wrote about the case under the heading, Rushing to Death, Ignoring Reversible Causes of Suffering. So think about that. She said she didn't want to die. She asked for care. The care wasn't available, but MADE was. Now supporters of assisted death do have arguments, so let's go through them. The first argument is autonomy. It's my body, my life, my choice. Alright, sure. But how free of a choice is it, really? Is someone who wants to die always thinking clearly? I mean, if you google anything even tangentially related to suicide, you get a crisis hotline, not an application for MADE. And you have to consider the reasons why people choose MADE. Sometimes it's to keep themselves from being a burden on their families. Sometimes it's because the care they need has a waiting list, and death does not. If the material conditions were different, if they could actually get the care, would they still choose death? And this just applies to the adults. That two-year-old in the Netherlands didn't say yes to anything. Others made the final choice. Another argument is that nobody should have to die in agony. Agreed. But the alternative to euthanasia isn't agony, it's better care. Again, in the Dutch case, the independent doctors said there were still reasonable alternatives, such as palliative care options and other medications. Third, you've got transparency. Supporters argue that it's better to have it done out in the open, where it can be regulated. Maybe, but open and regulated also means normal. And normalization is how you get, well, this. Which brings us to the big question I hinted at earlier. Why be a burden on society and your family? Every year, Health Canada asks MADE providers about the nature of their patients' suffering. In 2024, about half of MADE recipients cited perceived burdens on family, friends, or caregivers. Patients can list more than one reason, so this doesn't mean half died only because they felt like a burden. But it's part of the big picture. Remember Donna Duncan? Her daughter told CTV, I just think she didn't want to be a burden. In suicide prevention, feeling like a burden is a textbook warning sign. So if you're healthy, and you say everyone would be better off without me, society calls it a crisis. If you're old, sick, or disabled, and say the same thing, society has no problem writing you off. And here's what's strange about all this. Caring for people who can't take care of themselves isn't some modern luxury. It's one of our defining traits as humans, going all the way back to prehistory. Take Shanidar 1, a Neanderthal found in Iraq. He had a crippled arm, a badly damaged skull, and was probably partially blind. He survived those injuries for years. Someone, his family, his tribe, must have been feeding and protecting him. Or Romito 2, a young woman with a form of dwarfism who lived in Italy 12,000 years ago. She probably couldn't have kept up with daily life, but her people kept her alive anyway, and she managed to live into her teens. Many anthropologists believe that sort of compassion is what allowed humans to evolve the way we did. That it's what allowed us to grow such huge brains and become the dominant species on this planet. For example, human babies are helpless, and childhood lasts a long time. As a result, in those days, mothers couldn't raise their offspring alone. They needed grandmothers, fathers, siblings, and others to pitch in. That shared care gave us time for those long childhoods and bigger brains. And those big brains didn't just allow us to use better and better technology. It made groups that could support even more people who couldn't support themselves. It's a feedback loop. Caring for the weak isn't a weakness we evolved past. It's one of the reasons we're still here. These days, people worry that capitalism treats people like disposable economic units. Or they worry that soon a rogue AI will up and decide to wipe us all out. But if we decide to eliminate tens of thousands of people so that they won't be a burden, well, we're kind of doing the work ourselves. For as long as there have been humans, the most human thing we've done is take care of our needy. We cared for the injured Neanderthal, the disabled child, the grandmother who can't work anymore. If we lose that, humanity itself will be weaker for it. But what do you think? Leave your comment below. And if you want to support the work we do, join us on AmericaUncovered.tv, where you'll get access to thousands of episodes ad-free, plus a community chat, live streams, and more. Just click this button here or the link below. I'm Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching America Uncovered.