Is Euthanasia Murder? The Netherlands and the United States

By Tom Kando

I’d like to piggy-back on Madeleine’s post, Senior Citizens Visiting Holland Beware!! In that post, she discusses Presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s recent allegation that the Dutch euthanize their elderly against their will. This is not new. My conservative friends have made similar accusations for years.


Killing someone against their will is called murder. So Rick Santorum and other conservatives are saying that the Dutch authorities of murdering many of their senior citizens. Here is my rebuttal:

1. The accusation is a lie: the number of people put to death in the Netherlands against their will is zero, zip, nil, nada, not one. The Dutch have living-will and do-not-resuscitate rules, as do many states in America. They have legalized euthanasia, as has Oregon, among others. But I repeat: Not ONE single Dutchman is put to death against his/her will, by hospitals or by any other authority. Of course, there are Dutchmen who get murdered - by street criminals. Which brings me to my second point:

2. How do the US and the Netherlands compare, in terms of people being killed against their will (= murder)?

In the Netherlands, there are about 160 murders per year. In the US, the number is around 16,000. Which means that the US proportional rate is about five times higher. But this is a different issue, you say. Right.

So what about people being killed against their will (= murder) by the authorities?
Under capital punishment, the US still executes nearly 50 people every year (most of them in Texas).
Netherlands: no capital punishment. The US executes more people than nearly every other country (China and Iran still beat us). Also, police kill many hundreds of people every year in the line of duty. This also falls under the heading of “being killed by the authorities against your will.”

But, you say: executing serial killers, cop killers, terrorists, child torturers and other monsters is fine. I agree. I am not against the death penalty in principle.

Also: many homicides by peace officers are justifiable (or so the “internal investigations” tell us). And there is a lot of “suicide by cop:” Some asshole decides to check out, but he is too cowardly to do the job himself, so he challenges a peace officer to do his dirty work for him. Yes, this happens.

But here is my main point: Santorum’s (and other conservatives’) allegations about Dutch murderous euthanasia are a lie. NO ONE is EVER put to death against their will by the authorities in the Netherlands - something which cannot be said about the United States, as I have shown.

So this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. And worse than that, it highlights the fact that political candidates get away with blatant lies about another country's practices. Check out this link: Euthanasia in the Netherlands: Rick Santorum's bogus Statistics

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