The alarming spread of child euthanasia…
Report in The Spectator magazine by Madeleine Teahan, published 3rd May 2023.
A few weeks ago the Dutch parliament announced that euthanasia will be licensed for children between the ages of one and 12, for cases involving ‘such a serious illness or disorder that death is inevitable, and the death of these children is expected in the foreseeable future’. The coverage of this latest development was eerily muted, considering the enormity of what had just been communicated; namely, that a European liberal democracy had deemed it appropriate for seriously sick infants and primary school-aged children to receive lethal injections.
Meanwhile, over in Canada, two months prior to the Netherlands’ latest decree, a parliamentary committee recommended that Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) should be extended to ‘mature minors’.
This Report of the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, which is alarming to read and received even less publicity than the Netherlands, recommended that ‘the government of Canada amend the eligibility criteria for MAID set out in the Criminal Code to include minors’, with the stipulation that, without lethal intervention, their death should be ‘reasonably foreseeable’.
Isn’t everyone’s death ‘reasonably foreseeable’? The committee emphasised that ‘MAID should not be denied on the basis of age alone’ and therefore, it should be accessible to any child whom doctors believe has ‘requisite decision-making capacity’ which is ominously vague, given the child is making a life-or-death decision.
As a mother to three children, I was horrified to read a further recommendation that, ‘where appropriate, the parents or guardians of a mature minor be consulted in the course of the assessment process for MAID, but that the will of a minor who is found to have the requisite decision-making capacity ultimately take priority’.
In other words, if your anxious teenager wishes to be euthanised without your consent, you have no power to stop doctors from killing them. You might know that their feelings change dramatically from week to week, that they have a lifetime history of depressive episodes, that they have recently been heartbroken or bullied by peers but ultimately you will be overruled and told that your vulnerable and volatile child knows better than you do.
Bizarrely, the report’s authors concede: ‘It was widely acknowledged that the frontal lobe of the brain, which plays a key role in risk assessment and decision-making, is not fully developed until well into adulthood.’ And yet, the conclusion stands: it is appropriate to allow children to decide if they want to live or die.
How did it come to this? How have liberal democracies become so enticed by the sinister notion that children should be eligible for euthanasia?
The answer can be found in a quote from the Collège des médecins du Québec, which features in Canada’s report: ‘Suffering is independent of age and that suffering experienced by minors can be as intolerable as it is for adults.’
Suffering is undeniably universal. Once you accept the humanitarian case for assisted suicide, euthanasia or both, it is very easy to conclude that the right to access such ‘treatment’ should be available to the many and not the few. Why shouldn’t a ten-year old be entitled to pain relief via a lethal injection, if adults are?
Canada’s report features evidence from Caroline Marcoux, who describes her son Charles’ desire to access MAID. She told the committee: ‘He was ready and he deserved that choice. It would have been his decision, in the end.’
It is impossible not to feel desperately sorry for Caroline Marcoux. But none of us, especially teenagers, makes decisions in a vacuum. Capacity questions aside – and they are critical – we now live in an unprecedented age where our children can be in the same room as us, ostensibly safe and sound, while simultaneously inhabiting a toxic digital world or discreetly conversing with a stranger from the comfort of their smartphone.