Researchers from Britain’s Kingston University have uncovered a disturbing trend in the doctor-assisted murder trend in the Netherlands. Over the past two decades, dozens of adults with autism have been euthanized by their doctors.
Experts and pro-life activists believe the law is now being distorted far beyond what was meant when it was passed in 2002. The original law made it legal for adults in the Netherlands to have their doctor kill them over “unbearable” pain from an incurable illness.
The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalize doctor-assisted suicide. Prior to that, only a handful of liberal idiot states like Oregon had legalized it, but never an entire country. It was passed under the guise of “strict” guidelines under which people could have their doctor murder them.
Kinston University’s research doesn’t make it sound like that is happening. Between 2012 and 2021, they found 39 individuals with autism who had been deliberately killed by their doctors. More than half of them were under the age of 50. Five of them were under the age of 30. Many cited autism as the sole cause or a major contributor to why they wanted to have their lives ended.
Irene Tuffrey-Wijne is a palliative care specialist at Kingston who performed the research into the Netherlands’ doctor-assisted suicide program.
“Thirty included being lonely as one the causes of their unbearable pain,” said Tuffrey-Wijne. “Eight said the only causes of their suffering were factors linked to their intellectual disability or autism — social isolation, a lack of coping strategies or an inability to adjust their thinking.”
One of the euthanized patients was a young man in his 20s with autism. He cited having been “unhappy since childhood” as a reason why he wanted to die, and that he “longed for social contacts but was unable to connect with others.”
An autistic woman in her 30s was offered the chance to move into an assisted living facility, but her doctors said that she could not maintain relationships. So, they killed her.
There is no doubt that these people with autism were suffering from loneliness and social isolation. But is killing them really the solution we should choose as a society? Plus, autistic people might not even understand the implications of the fact that they die when euthanized. How can they legally consent to have a doctor put them to death?
In one-third of the cases examined, the doctors determined that the autistic individuals had “no prospect of improvement.” That is a bald-faced lie, told in the furtherance of a crime against our fellow human beings.
The director of Cambridge University’s Autism Research Center, Simon Baron-Cohen, noted that it is “abhorrent” to be killing autistic individuals without offering them any additional support. A Dutch psychiatrist named Dr. Bram Sizoo found it incredibly disturbing that autistic people are viewing doctor-assisted suicide as a solution to their problems.
“Some of them are almost excited at the prospect of death,” says Sizoo. “They think this will be the end of their problems and the end of their family’s problems.”
Back when the debates were first raised about doctor-assisted suicide, it was always presented as an argument to euthanize people with incredibly painful cancer, who were going to die within a matter of months anyway. It was never about killing people who are disabled but lonely.
Pro-lifers tried to warn about the slippery slope that would lead straight to Nazi-style executions of people with disabilities. Society should have listened. Hopefully, the Dutch government will revisit this issue and eventually overturn this abomination.
