Euthanasia in the Netherlands Chabot arrest

Dutch tv journal of 21 June 1994.

In 1991, Boudewijn Chabot assisted with suicide of a physically healthy woman who had lost everything that gave her life meaning. After being acquitted in the lower courts, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands had rendered a verdict that day finding the Doctor not guilty.

This case, one of many over the last twenty years, moved the practice of euthanasia in Holland one step forward. The Dutch were now willing to accept euthanasia for mental anguish.

Until the so-called Chabot ruling of the Supreme Court (June 21, 1994) was euthanasia considered permissible if in the opinion of the physician (and by him consulted colleagues) there was a hopeless and unbearable physical suffering and the patient voluntarily , deliberate and 'sustainable' had asked for help in dying. In that case the Supreme Court expanded the possibilities for euthanasia also permissible to consider in case the patient was related to psychological symptoms associated with depression.

The Netherlands has the most liberal assisted suicide laws in the world. Under Dutch law, doctors can administer a lethal dose of muscle relaxants and sedatives to terminally ill patients at a patient's request.

Britain's religious leaders claim that one in every 32 deaths in the Netherlands is a result of legal or illegal euthanasia. In January 2005, a report in the Dutch Journal of Medicine alleged there had been 22 cases of illegal euthanasia involving infants born with spina bifida.

"A similar law here could lead to some 13,000 deaths a year and Dutch pro-euthanasia groups are now, moreover, campaigning for further relaxations of the law - for example, to encompass people with dementia," said the faith leaders.

They also claimed that many doctors in Oregon in the US, where the Death with Dignity Act of 1994 legalised assisted suicide, were reluctant to help patients to die. In the UK, the religious leaders maintain that the largest most recent surveys show that most British doctors do not favour a change in the law.

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