Doctors Execute Toddler As Part Of Country’s Legal Euthanasia Regime

A nearly two-year-old with severe brain damage is dead. The Dutch authorities who reviewed the case say the doctors who killed him acted with “due care.” That phrase should not pass without a fight. Since when does carefully deciding to end a child’s life turn it into anything other than killing?

The Netherlands rolled out a new “termination of life” framework for young children, and this toddler is apparently the first case under it. The child had developmental issues, couldn’t improve, so the state-sanctioned response was to speed up the end. No one asked the child. No one could. But the doctors, the investigators, the whole machinery of Dutch approval decided that a short life is not worth living. That is a calculation no one should make for a child. We used to think the measure of a society is how it treats its weakest. Now we are watching a country use “compassion” as a reason to dispose of the ones who need the most care.

None of this is abstract theory. It is a real toddler, a real death, and a real government stamp of approval. The slippery slope isn’t a metaphor anymore. It’s a policy document. American conservatives have said for years that legalized euthanasia would expand beyond consenting adults. The Dutch are proving it faster than anyone imagined.

We don’t have to be the Netherlands. We can look at a child with severe brain damage and see someone worthy of love and protection, not a problem to be solved with an injection. The most defenseless among us deserve better than due care. Any framework that ends a child’s life is not a mercy. It’s a tragedy dressed up as a medical procedure.