By Cory Franklin

July 15^th, 2026

The truth about the medical euthanasia movement has always been that once it begins no one can tell where – or whether – it will end. Recently, a government official in the Netherlands told the Dutch legislature that a physician “assisted”  (quotes indicate “assisted” is a euphemism for “actively caused”) the death of a terminally ill child who was older than 1 but younger than 12 . This marked the first time that a child in this age category was put to death since the country sanctioned pediatric euthanasia in 2024 for those between 1 and 12. Medical euthanasia is scheduled to take effect in Illinois in September. Governor J.B. Pritzker, take note of the Netherlands experience.

In 2001,  the Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalize medical euthanasia, approving a permissible age limit for subjects to be killed restricted to those over 12. Shortly after, a protocol was adopted to allow the killing of babies under the age of 1.  That meant in the Netherlands an age gap existed between 1 and 12 where it was impermissible for doctors to terminate children’s lives.

The Dutch government, obviously concerned about this inequity, addressed it in 2024 by extending medical euthanasia to those children. Expressed in coolly bloodless terms on the Dutch government’s web page “Termination of life for terminally ill children aged 1 to 12”: “This decision [to terminate the child’s life] is always made in consultation with the parents and, if possible, also with the child.” No mention of a child’s consent. The doctor simply has to believe “that the termination of life was not being carried out against the child’s will.” This aligns the Netherlands with neighboring Belgium, the second country in the world to legalize euthanasia, which abolished all age restrictions in 2014.

The permissive attitude in the Netherlands toward assisted suicide – even for children – has become so accommodating that this Dutch child’s death generated little reaction in the country. Business as usual, while assisted suicide becomes “standard operating procedure” in the Low Countries, where the current death rate due to medical suicide has risen to around 5% of all deaths, the highest percentage in the world except for that in Canada. In the 12 US states that allow assisted suicide the percentage runs lower, in most just under 1% of all deaths. But this still means come September, Illinois is likely to experience hundreds of deaths by medical suicide annually.

In the past decade, 100,000 Canadians have died from medically assisted suicide, a rate slightly more than 5% of all deaths – and rising.   Children in Canada are not eligible for MAID (the Canadian acronym for medical assistance in dying) but those with disabilities are and terminal illness is not a requirement. Meanwhile, religious opposition, once the bulwark against any type of suicide, is vanishing.  The Canadian Anglican Church recently approved of medical euthanasia as a solution to the tragedy of human suffering. Suicidal people, who once looked to the Church for succor, may now receive a tacit death sentence.

All this means that the longstanding rationale that assisted suicide is an issue simply between a patient and his or her caregiver is no longer viable. The new and more permissive personal autonomy argument is embodied in the question, “Why should the Government stand in the way of my personal choice to die exactly when and how I want?” This type of moral shortsightedness appeals to many, including politicians like Governor Pritzker.

The State inevitably becomes involved when patients, including those with mental illness – and now children – become eligible for assisted suicide. Regarding children, few cultures in history have treated sick children with the disregard being shown the Netherlands, a notable exception being Nazi Germany.

Ethicists in favor of pediatric euthanasia frequently mention that the Greek philosopher Plutarch recorded in his writings how disabled babies in Ancient Sparta were abandoned  and left to die of exposure. Recent discoveries, however, have debunked this belief; even the Spartans did not kill unhealthy children.

Far from being a sign of progressive enlightenment as its proponents portray it, medical euthanasia for children is more indicative of a gradual cultural decay.  This devolution to casual erasure of  admittedly difficult lives puts our supposedly sophisticated society on par with primitives who believed human sacrifice would bring better weather.

As the euthanasia movement grows, the avenue to protect children must be on emphasizing the prohibition on their killing and offering better care for those disabled and severely ill – bearing in mind that nearly everyone experiences pain or suffering in life. The healthcare community cannot shrug its shoulders and evade responsibility for any child – Down syndrome, severe prematurity, terminally ill,  behavioral disability – whether treatable or not. They still have meaning to our society.

In a 2023 statement, the American College of Pediatrics called upon the “medical profession in the United States to reject euthanasia and assisted suicide for minors and return to its pro-life Hippocratic roots to uphold the ancient medical ethics principle of first, do no harm.”

The Dutch experience with pediatric euthanasia highlights the immutable reality about human nature that Hippocrates understood: once you legitimize the power to kill for any reason, it’s difficult to control how that power is used.

I want to thank Victoria Tiller MSN for her contribution to this article.

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Cory Franklin, physician and writer, is a frequent contributor to johnkassnews.com. Director of Medical Intensive Care at Cook County (Illinois) Hospital for 25 years, before retiring he wrote over 80 medical articles, chapters, abstracts, and correspondences in books and professional journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. In 1999, he was awarded the Shubin-Weil Award, one of only fifty people ever honored as a national role model for the practice and teaching of intensive care medicine. 

Since retirement, Dr. Franklin has been a contributor to the Chicago Tribune op-ed page. His work has been published in the New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times and excerpted in the New York Review of Books. Internationally, his work has appeared internationally in Spiked, The Guardian and The Jerusalem Post. For nine years he hosted a weekly audio podcast, Rememberingthepassed, which discusses the obituaries of notable people who have died recently. His 2015 book “Cook County ICU: 30 Years Of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases” was a medical history best-seller. In 2024, he co-authored The COVID Diaries: Anatomy of a Contagion As it Happened.

In 1993, he worked as a technical advisor to Harrison Ford and was a role model for the physician character Ford played in the film, The Fugitive.