First Toddler Euthanized in the Netherlands
By legalizing euthanasia, American states are starting down the same dangerous path.
Aubrey Harrisby Aubrey Harris
September 17, 2026, 12:04 AM
Nobody would deny that the situation was tragic.
The toddler — whose name and sex are not disclosed in the official government report (this article will use masculine pronouns for simplicity) — was clearly suffering. Born extremely prematurely, he’d suffered several rounds of sepsis and had been left with damage to the brain’s white matter (periventricular leukomalacia), spastic cerebral palsy, and severe visual limitations. By the time he was eight months old, he’d developed infantile epileptic spasms syndrome (IESS) and was experiencing severe seizures several times a day. Understandably, he struggled to sleep as his lungs filled with fluid, making eating, swallowing, and breathing difficult.
The only criterion is that the child is suffering “unbearably” and that the situation is “hopeless.”
The drugs he was on seemed to do almost nothing, and at nearly 24 months old, the child was just hitting the developmental milestones of your average six-week-old newborn.
The whole thing sounds like a nightmare to any parent. Watching your child suffer endlessly while you sit helplessly on the sidelines is an experience no one would wish on his worst enemy. At some point, all anyone wants is for the whole horrible thing to come to a merciful end. And so this Dutch toddler’s parents asked their child’s doctor to kill him.
This would be a crime story, except that in the Netherlands it’s been legal to euthanize children between the ages of 1 and 12 ever since the government expanded the country’s euthanasia laws in 2024. The only criterion is that the child is suffering “unbearably” and that the situation is “hopeless.” But nobody had actually gone through the process until now. (RELATED: First Child Under 12 Euthanized Since the Netherlands Law Passed)
https://spectator.org/first-toddler-euthanized-in-the-netherlands/
