Lawmakers in the Netherlands have crossed a dangerous threshold in moving to legalize “mercy killings,” says Dr. Allan Handysides, health ministries director for the Seventh-day Adventist Church worldwide.  On November 28, the main body of the Dutch legislature voted 104 to 40 to pass a law allowing for doctor-assisted suicides for terminally ill patients in some circumstances.  When the bill is formally approved by the legislature’s upper house, the Netherlands will become the only country in the world where a doctor can legally engage in euthanasia.

“The Seventh-day Adventist Church recognizes the moral dilemmas inherent in caring for the terminally ill,” says Handysides.  “But we strongly disagree that legalizing mercy killings is a morally appropriate way to deal with a patient’s suffering.”

An official statement released by the Adventist Church in1992 draws a sharp distinction between “foregoing medical interventions that only prolong suffering and postpones the moment of death” and “actions that have as their primary intention the direct taking of a life.”  Drawing on Biblical principles of the value of human life, the statement rejects euthanasia and affirms the Adventist Church’s commitment to “revealing God’s grace by minimizing suffering.”

“A terminally ill person is entitled to respect, compassion, and to every medical treatment available to alleviate pain and improve the quality of their existence,” says Handysides. He adds that the dying individual ultimately has the choice to accept or reject treatments that merely extend life.

“But this is categorically and morally different to active euthanasia, or ‘mercy-killings,’” says Handysides. He also expresses concern that doctor-assisted suicide is open to abuse, no matter how many precautions are in place.

Dr. Reinder Bruinsma, executive secretary of the Adventist Church in the Trans-European region, which includes the Netherlands, says he believes that the position of most Dutch people is not very different from that of many people in other European countries.  “Many, especially Christians, reject active euthanasia,” he says.  Bruinsma, who is a Dutch citizen, explains that “the difference between the Dutch and other nations is probably that they are more willing to regulate situations of which many, admittedly, do not approve, but which happen anyway.”

This pragmatic legislative approach has led the Netherlands to adopt Europe’s most liberal drug and prostitution laws and, in September, to become the first country to grant full legal recognition to same-sex marriages.

Proponents of the euthanasia law point to statistics showing that in 1999 there were more than 2,200 “mercy killings” reported in the Netherlands, and argue that the new law will merely introduce more safeguards and allow greater legal scrutiny of an already common practice.

Netherlands’ euthanasia law has drawn protests from human rights groups, medical associations, and religious leaders around the world.  The German Hospice Foundation has called the bill Europe’s “first euthanasia law since the Nazi era.”