Dutch doctors euthanized a toddler. No one should be surprised.

By Mark P. Mostert, Op-ed contributor Tuesday, November 10, 2026

It’s not exactly stop-the-press news that the insanity of euthanasia is spreading everywhere.

Over the last several decades, there have been determined and often successful efforts to legalize and weaponize death on demand, anywhere, anytime, for anyone, for any reason.

A long time ago, pro-death activists began by assuring a gullible world that euthanasia would only be for a very few isolated patients, and that these patients would have to meet very strict and immovable guidelines before being medically killed.

Great gobs of energy were spent cloaking killing as medical treatment. The logic: If killing is a medical “treatment,” and we all know medical treatment is good, then medicalized killing is good and in the “best interests” of the patient.

In addition, other well-worn arguments have hammered us ad nauseam in the public square: Patients have a right to choose to die, “my body, my choice” and “no quality of life left.”

But over time, guidelines are often loosened or removed. No longer is euthanasia only for isolated cases. And nowhere is the expansion more chilling than when it reaches children.

In the Netherlands, children between 1 and 12 were, until two years ago, safe from being killed. Then the rules changed to allow euthanasia for this age group.

The first child to be euthanized under the new rules was reported last December in a dry government report. I noted then that the report was long on apparatchik-speech but short on details. No age, no detailed explanation of the medical conditions that prompted death. Just the usual vaguely self-congratulatory nonsense: By the rules, a rare case, for the good of the child — blah blah blah.

Now we know more, and it’s heartbreaking.

This poor child was almost two years old.

Born prematurely at 26 weeks, he or she had severe brain damage resulting in frequent uncontrolled seizures and severe cerebral palsy. There were also significant respiratory and swallowing problems. The child was also blind. The parents and doctors all agreed that the child was unlikely to survive into adolescence or adulthood.

That’s all the pro-deathers needed to know.

The solution was not compassionate palliative care until the child died naturally.

The solution was killing.

Now for a lesson in the ultimate culture of death: what everyone said after the child was killed.

First, everyone agreed that the doctors carrying out the killing had “acted with due care,” because, as the Assessment Committee for Late-Term Abortion and Termination of Life in Newborns and Children Ages 1 to 12 noted, “All facets of being human ... were severely impaired and were not going to improve,” and “the child was suffering unbearably and without prospect of relief.”

Subtext: You are only human if you are not disabled.

Further justifying the killing, the committee was careful to report that the doctors made the right decision and “strictly adhered to all due-care requirements.”

Subtext: We were just following orders.

The ivory tower ethicists were quick to support the killers. One university professor pointed out that “it is good that the committee reached such a well-considered judgment. Many physicians and parents will benefit from this in the future.”

Subtext: The test case killing went so well it’ll be a blueprint for killing children in the future.

Oh, and the academics are worried that the poor doctor might land in hot water for what was supposed to be strict “due care.”

“It is a complicated situation for a doctor. After all, he performed the procedure to end the life and then has to wait months to find out whether or not he will be prosecuted.”

Subtext: The doctor may well be the victim here, not the dead child.

This is where the steady expansion of euthanasia leads. What begins with assurances about extraordinary circumstances and rigid safeguards ends with adults deciding that a severely disabled 2-year-old’s life should end — and congratulating themselves afterward for following the rules.

The child could not choose death. The child could not consent to death. The child was vulnerable precisely because of profound disability.

The answer to such vulnerability should have been extraordinary compassion and care. Instead, the answer was killing.