As France slowly moves toward legalising assisted suicide, a Dutch ethicist once responsible for reviewing his country's application of its 2002 law warned that apparently tightly controlled limits in legislation can lead to excesses over time.
Theo Boer, a bioethics professor who helped review euthanasia cases from 2005 to 2014, said the Dutch liberalisation actually led to a boom in cases of assisted suicide, from 2,000 in 2002 to 7,800 in 2021.
Suicide outside the law also rose in the Netherlands in that period while it fell in Germany, a neighbouring country with no recourse to legal euthanasia.
“I was convinced that the Dutch had found the right balance between compassion, respect for human life and a guarantee of individual liberties,” he wrote in Le Monde. “Over the years, I’ve been more and more worried by certain trends.”
France is currently debating a change in its end-of-life law, which stresses palliative care but is not much used.
President Emmanuel Macron supports legalisation and the National Assembly will probably vote on the issue sometime next year.
The Catholic Church opposes any change. Other faiths in France have taken more nuanced views so a common front against change is not expected.
Boer, a Protestant with a doctorate in theology, said legalised euthanasia was initially only for mentally competent adults with a terminal illness. But later changes have included people with chronic maladies, handicaps or psychiatric problems, and even young children.
“Now we are discussing an extension to old people without any pathology,” he said.
“What is considered a welcome event by those attached to their autonomy quickly becomes an incitement to despair for others.”
He continued: “This slippery slope is adorned with the trappings of justice, so that the next steps are easily predictable.” If the French took a close look at the Netherlands, “you might see the France of 2040.”
He thought the Netherlands would not have legalised assisted suicide if it had as many options for palliative care as now exist.
“If the most defined and best controlled system in the world cannot guarantee that assisted death remains a last choice, why should France do better?” he asked.
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