Dutch seek to expand euthanasia policy

THE Dutch government is seeking to expand its current euthanasia policy, setting guidelines for when doctors may end the lives of terminally ill newborns with the parents’ consent, The Associated Press has learned.

A letter outlining the new directives, which also include guidelines for late-term abortions, was expected to be submitted to parliament for discussion by mid-October, but the new policy will not require a change of law, Dutch health ministry spokeswoman Annette Dijkstra said yesterday. The new guidelines are likely to spark an outcry from the Vatican, right-to-life proponents and some advocacy groups for the handicapped who abhor the current policy that allows adult euthanasia if the patients request it and if certain conditions are met.

Proponents and opponents agree the change is doubly important because it will provide the model for how the Dutch will treat other cases in which patients are unable to say whether they want to live or die, such as the mentally retarded or elderly people who have become demented.

The governing conservative Christian Democrat party - a majority of which fought legalisation of euthanasia in 2001 when it was in the opposition - will embrace the guidelines drawn up last year by doctors at the Groningen University Medical Centre.

The guidelines, known as the Groningen Protocol, prompted reactions of shock and outrage from the Vatican and from social conservatives and religious groups worldwide, but have received minimal coverage in the Dutch media. Under the protocol, euthanasia would be permissible when a child is terminally ill with no prospect of recovery, when it is suffering great pain, when two sets of doctors agree the situation is hopeless, and when parents give their consent.

The Dutch Health Ministry has postponed this decision several times, and wishes to control the release of information around the policy change, which is still being finalised. But Dijkstra confirmed the broad lines of the guidelines after details began leaking to the press.