Legal Status Groningen Protocol

The Groningen Academic Hospital claimed about the possibility of legalize euthanasia on
people who are incapable of deciding of themselves. In August the main Dutch doctors
association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill
people with no free will. The Groningen Protocol would create a legal framework for
permitting doctors to actively end the life of newborns whose diseases cant be cure.
The guideline says euthanasia is acceptable when the childs medical team and doctors
agree that the pain cant be alleviated and there is no life expectancy.
The groningen protocol was declared to be mandatory in 2005 by the Dutch Society for
Pediatrics. Euthanasia is ilegal in Netherlands under 12 years old but the voluntary
euthanasia is legal for people who has 12 years or older. Doctors who prosecute the
protocol are protected by the law but just if they act in accordance with the steps of the
protocol. request by parents, acting as the representatives of their child, is invalid under
Dutch law but this means that euthanasia on infants is only accepted under strict conditions.

When suffering cant be alleviated, the law consider it as a extreme condition, and if a
Doctor decides to end an infant life, it will not be considered a murder.
To have a legal control of euthanasia in newborns, Doctors must do reports and then they
need to be assessed by criminal prosecutors. This process is essential to prevent
interrogations by police officers, and thats the reason why the Gronengin Protocol was
made.
Example of a Case of Euthanasia on Infants.
Each year there are between 15 to 20 cases of euthanasia in newborn infants, and according
to the Dutch law, the doctor must present a death certificate if the infant died of a natural
causes but if the death was because of euthanasia it cant be certified as a natural cause of
death, so in this case the doctor must inform the coroner, inspect the body and inform the
district attorney, so with this information provided by the doctor the office of the district

attorney must need to review the case in light of applicable laws or jurisprudence.
In the next step, the district attorney needs to present the case, with his opinion to the
College of Attorneys General, with this, the four members of the National Public
Prosecution Department can decide whether or not to prosecute. And the final choice is
made by the minister of justice.

1990s Cases
During 1990s there were two newborn with a strong disease, the first one had an extreme
form of spina bifida (a malformation of the backbone) and the other newborn had trisomy
13 (severe intellectual disability and physical abnormalities in many parts of the
body). Both newborns had limited life expectancy and a suffering that cant be alleviated,
so the doctors decided to apply euthanasia to those newborns. Netherlands provided
some guidance for judges and physicians but some organizations had claimed for a clearer
guidelines, the think that medical, legal and ethical expertise would be more capable that
judges of assessing that kind of cases.