New Standard for Euthanasia: “Tired of Living”

Really. This is not a joke. A Dutch “Right to Die” campaign has garnered 100,000 signatures to support legalization of lethal injections for healthy people who are simply “tired of living.” Under this plan, non-medical people would be trained to inject people over age 70 who “consider their lives complete” and have a “heartfelt and enduring desire” to die.

This is the slippery slope run amuk and The Netherlands has long been the grand laboratory. The Dutch have gone from failing to prosecute assisted suicide and euthanasia even though it was illegal to legalizing euthanasia to euthanizing people without their consent to establishing guidelines to allow parents to have their newborns with disabilities euthanized.

Alex Schadenberg of the Canadian Euthanasia Prevention Coalition reports that at a World Federation of Right to Die Societies Conference in 2006, the leader of the Dutch euthanasia society spoke openly of the final goal — “euthanasia for those who are ‘tired of living.’” This is their “final solution.” Does it sound eery? And all too familiar?

Lest one dismiss this effort as some of those crazy Europeans, think again. Pro-euthanasia forces in the U.S., buoyed by their recent successes in legalizing assisted suicide in Washington and Montana, are now polling in seven states — Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, Wyoming, Arizona, Hawaii and Colorado — to test the waters for ballot initiatives in 2012.

They are excited. We are terrified.

Barbara Lyons