Christian groups in The Netherlands are staunchly opposing a proposal from the government to allow assisted suicide for generally healthy elders who feel like they have already "completed life."
Gert-Jan Segers, the leader of a Christian parliamentary party, said this proposal promotes the culture of death and will only encourage what pro-life advocates call "state-sanctioned murder."
The official also emphasised that approving this kind of proposal to allow Dutch people to take away their lives arbitrarily will affect not only the concerned individuals but their families and communities as well.
"The myth is that it is purely individual choice, while it always also affects family, the community, health care providers and ultimately society," the Christian party leader said, as quoted by The New York Times.
Geert Wilders, a populist politician, meanwhile said the Dutch government will in effect be an enabler of suicide for old people who are lonely and depressed if it approves the proposed measure.
"We cannot allow people who are needy or lonely to be talked into dying," Wilders said. "Combating loneliness — and investing in dignity and focusing on our elderly — is always the best option."
He added that the Dutch people's tolerance towards death may have already gone too far. In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to allow patients who are suffering from unbearable pain and whose condition has been determined as incurable to undergo assisted suicide.
The Dutch government, however, wants to expand the legalisation of euthanasia to include old individuals who feel like they have already lived their lives fully, even though they are not sick.
The European nation's health minister herself, Edith Schippers, is supporting this proposal for expanded euthanasia.
In a recent letter to the Dutch parliament, Schippers argued that there is a need to address the needs of "older people who do not have the possibility to continue life in a meaningful way, who are struggling with the loss of independence and reduced mobility, and who have a sense of loneliness, partly because of the loss of loved ones, and who are burdened by general fatigue, deterioration and loss of personal dignity."
The Dutch government plans to come up with a draft of this controversial bill before the end of next year, after holding consultations with medical practitioners and ethicists.
