Voluntary Euthanasia and the Risks of Abuse: Can We Learn Anything from the Netherlands?

The California Death With Dignity Act. California Civil Code Title 10.5, Initiative.

Larson Edward , “Washington State: The Nevada of Death?” Seattle Times, October 1991.

Bernhoft Robin , M.D. “Should Aid-in-Dying Be Allowed? No.” Seattle Times, October 27, 1991, p. A21.

The proposal was put forward by Meijler F. I. , a cardiologist at the University of Utrecht, in 1984. See Gomez Carlos , Regulating Death: Euthanasia and the Case of the Netherlands, New York: Free Press, 1991, p. 96, citing Teresa Takken.

This does not, however, entail that love-sick teenagers have a fundamental right to suicide or that one ought not intervene to prevent the suicide of a person who is depressed. For an extended discussion of how a right to suicide can be fundamental but not entail these conclusions, see my “Suicide: A Fundamental Human Right?” in Battin M. Pabst and Mayo David J. , Suicide: The Philosophical Issues (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980), pp. 267–285.

Reported in English in van der Maas Paul J. vanDelden Johannes J.M. Pijnenborg Loes and Looman Caspar W. N. , “Euthanasia and Other Medical Decisions Concerning the End of Life,” The Lancet 338: 669–74 (September 14, 1991).

Ibid., p. 671.

Public Health and Welfare, 42 section 1395cc(f)(1)(A)(i).

See my brief note, “Suicide Prevention Centres Fail the Elderly,” Current Awareness Bulletin of the Suicide Information and Education Centre (Calgary, Canada) 3:3 (Summer 1988).

For specific recommendations concerning how to conduct such counseling, see my paper “Rational Suicide? How Can We Respond to a Request for Help?” Crisis [Journal of the International Association for Suicide Prevention] 12:2 (1991).

Source: Personal interviews in the Netherlands, September-October 1988; 1989; 1990.

der Maas Van , op cit., p. 673.