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Voluntary Euthanasia and the Risks of Abuse: Can We Learn Anything from the Netherlands?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Extract

In the United States’ quite volatile public debates over the legalization of voluntary active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, much has been made of the risk of abuse. Indeed, it was probably fears of abuse that contributed more than any other single factor to the 1991 defeat of the United States’ first ballot test of legalizing euthanasia, the state of Washington's Initiative 119—despite prior state and national polls suggesting the measure would pass. Opponents of Initiative 119, which would have legalized physician-performed euthanasia or physician-provided aid in suicide when voluntarily requested by competent terminally ill patients with less than six months to live, variously claimed that the legislation would encourage greedy family members to pressure patients into choosing death, that unscrupulous physicians would kill patients who became unattractive to treat, that cost-cutting pressures from hospitals, insurers, and other institutions would force patients into death, and that race-, age-, and handicap-prejudice would take an especial toll among vulnerable groups.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1992

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References

The California Death With Dignity Act. California Civil Code Title 10.5, Initiative.Google Scholar
Larson, Edward, “Washington State: The Nevada of Death?” Seattle Times, October 1991.Google Scholar
Bernhoft, Robin, M.D. “Should Aid-in-Dying Be Allowed? No.” Seattle Times, October 27, 1991, p. A21.Google Scholar
The proposal was put forward by Meijler, F. I., a cardiologist at the University of Utrecht, in 1984. See Gomez, Carlos, Regulating Death: Euthanasia and the Case of the Netherlands, New York: Free Press, 1991, p. 96, citing Teresa Takken.Google Scholar
This does not, however, entail that love-sick teenagers have a fundamental right to suicide or that one ought not intervene to prevent the suicide of a person who is depressed. For an extended discussion of how a right to suicide can be fundamental but not entail these conclusions, see my “Suicide: A Fundamental Human Right?” in Battin, M. Pabst and Mayo, David J., Suicide: The Philosophical Issues (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980), pp. 267285.Google Scholar
Reported in English in van der Maas, Paul J., vanDelden, Johannes J.M., Pijnenborg, Loes and Looman, Caspar W. N., “Euthanasia and Other Medical Decisions Concerning the End of Life,” The Lancet 338: 669–74 (September 14, 1991).Google Scholar
Ibid., p. 671.Google Scholar
Public Health and Welfare, 42 section 1395cc(f)(I)(A)(i).Google Scholar
See my brief note, “Suicide Prevention Centres Fail the Elderly,” Current Awareness Bulletin of the Suicide Information and Education Centre (Calgary, Canada) 3:3 (Summer 1988).Google Scholar
For specific recommendations concerning how to conduct such counseling, see my paper “Rational Suicide? How Can We Respond to a Request for Help?” Crisis [Journal of the International Association for Suicide Prevention] 12:2 (1991).Google Scholar
Source: Personal interviews in the Netherlands, September-October 1988; 1989; 1990.Google Scholar
der Maas, Van, et al., op cit., p. 673.Google Scholar