Last fall, a Dutch physician ended a child's life. A government review panel examined the case and ruled the doctor had acted with "due care."
The child was born at 26 weeks, survived with brain damage, spastic cerebral palsy, and severe epilepsy. He had never walked or spoken a word. He was not yet two years old.
Due care. For killing a toddler.
The case is the first known euthanasia of a toddler under the Netherlands' expanding death laws. It happened at the end of 2025. The details became public in September 2026.
The independent doctors initially consulted found the child was "not in continuous unbearable suffering" — and said alternatives to death existed. The attending physician didn't accept that. He shopped for a different answer, found a doctor who said yes, and proceeded.
The legal framework that made this possible is a Dutch regulation permitting the termination of life for children under twelve, which took effect in 2024. When it was introduced, the assurances were familiar to anyone who has watched euthanasia laws expand across the West: strict safeguards, extreme cases only, multiple layers of review. Two years later, a toddler is dead and the review panel signed off.
Every expansion of euthanasia law follows the same script. The initial law covers only competent adults making a voluntary, informed decision about their own terminal illness. Then the age drops. Then the definition of suffering expands from physical to psychological. Then the requirement for terminal illness disappears. Then consent itself becomes optional — because the patient is too young, too disabled, or too mentally ill to provide it.
Canada has followed the same path. In Ontario, 83-year-old Brigitte Stegemann was euthanized, and her granddaughter and caregiver Brigitte Kranendonk raised alarms about how the process unfolded. Canada's Medical Assistance in Dying program has been expanding eligibility steadily since it was introduced — and the trajectory is familiar.
Every advocate for these laws says the same thing: trust the safeguards. But the safeguards in this case said the child wasn't in unbearable suffering. The safeguards said alternatives existed. The physician went around them, found a willing second opinion, and the review board rubber-stamped the result.
Safeguards only work if someone enforces them. When the review panel's job is to evaluate whether a doctor followed procedure and the answer is always "with due care," the safeguard has become a rubber stamp.
Twenty years ago, suggesting that legalized euthanasia would lead to killing children who can't consent was called fearmongering. A slippery slope fallacy. Hysterical religious panic.
Born at 26 weeks. Dead before his second birthday. Approved by a panel that found due care was exercised.
The slope was never a fallacy. It was a schedule.