Doctors treating this profoundly premature two year old Dutch toddler said she still had real medical options left.
A second doctor overruled them and signed off on her death.
A government review board just called her death handled well.
The Netherlands Toddler Doctors Said Still Had Options
The girl was born at 26 weeks, months before she should have taken her first breath.
She came into the world with cerebral palsy, a visual impairment, and epilepsy that refused to respond to medication.
The seizures left her unable to sleep for more than short stretches at a time.
Mucus built up in her lungs until breathing and swallowing both became a fight.
Independent physicians who examined her case reached a conclusion the Dutch government did not want to hear.
They found she was not continuously suffering unbearably, and they identified real alternatives, including palliative care and other epilepsy medications that could still bring her seizures under control.
That finding should have ended the conversation.
Instead, the government brought in a second doctor who reached the opposite conclusion, and the killing proceeded.
The Netherlands has permitted euthanasia of newborns under its Groningen Protocol for years, but at the end of 2025 this two year old became the first child between the ages of one and twelve ever euthanized there.
The Dutch Euthanasia Review Board Called Her Death a Job Well Done
The Dutch government did not bury this case.
It publicized it.
The Assessment Committee for Late-Term Abortion and Termination of Life in Newborns and Children Ages 1 to 12 reviewed the euthanasia and concluded the doctor met every legal requirement.
NL Times reported the story on September 9 under a headline that should turn your stomach.
The case, the paper reported, was "handled well."
Not "tragic."
Not "a last resort."
Handled well.
Two days after that report went public, British lawmakers got the chance to vote on similar legislation, and rejected it, 286 to 270.
Disabled Members of Parliament voted against it roughly two to one.
Liz Carr, a disabled actress and campaigner who fought to defeat the bill, called the result "overwhelming relief."
British peer Lord Alton put it plainer than any bureaucrat ever will.
"You start with a little euthanasia and this is where it inevitably leads."
The Nazi Program That Started With One Sick Baby
This is not the first time a government decided a disabled child's life was not worth protecting, and used one hard case to open the door.
In February 1939, a father named Richard Kretschmar wrote to Adolf Hitler asking permission to kill his son Gerhard, an infant born blind with one leg and part of an arm missing.
Hitler sent his personal physician, Karl Brandt, to confirm the details, then authorized the killing in his name.
Gerhard was murdered on July 24, 1939.
That single case became the blueprint for the Nazi T4 program, which went on to kill at least 250,000 to 275,000 disabled Germans, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The museum's own historians note that the gas chambers built to kill disabled patients were later staffed by the same T4 personnel who ran the death camps.
Canada's MAID Program Is Already Targeting Children
Canada didn't need to see this case to start moving in the same direction.
A 2023 report from Canada's Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying urged lawmakers to expand euthanasia to "mature minors."
Dr. Louis Roy of the Quebec College of Physicians told that same committee Canada should legalize infant euthanasia for babies unlikely to survive.
Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children drafted a 2018 policy letting minors choose euthanasia without parental consent, reasoning that killing a child and letting one die are functionally the same act.
New York Already Signed a Version of This Into Law
New York didn't wait for the Netherlands either.
Governor Kathy Hochul signed New York's Medical Aid in Dying Act into law on February 6, 2026, letting physicians prescribe lethal drugs to adults given six months or less to live.
The New York Association on Independent Living fought it through Albany, and their numbers explain why.
Their research found that 82.4 percent of physicians view people with significant disabilities as having a lower quality of life, the exact bias that let a second opinion overrule two doctors in the Netherlands.
The group also warned New York was simultaneously cutting Medicaid and eliminating home care programs like CDPAP, leaving disabled residents to choose a lethal prescription instead of the caregiver support they'd lost.
Lawmakers passed it anyway.
Every Disabled Child in the West Just Got a Little Less Safe
A toddler who could not speak, could not consent, and could not advocate for herself is dead, and the government that killed her is proud of the paperwork.
That is not medicine responding to suffering.
That is a bureaucracy deciding which lives are worth the trouble of saving.
British disability campaigners just proved that fight can still be won when enough people show up to oppose it.
The same argument that got a two year old girl killed in the Netherlands is already written into New York law, safeguards and all.
Sources:
- Alex Schadenberg, "Nazis Euthanized Disabled Children, Now the Netherlands Is Doing It," LifeNews.com, September 18, 2026.
- NL Times, "First Ever Case of Euthanasia of Young Child, 2, Handled Well: Dutch Committee," NL Times, September 9, 2026.
- Right To Life UK, "Two Year Old Child Has Died by Euthanasia in the Netherlands Despite Doctors Initially Saying Reasonable Alternatives Remained," Right To Life UK, September 2026.
- Right To Life UK, "Disability Rights Campaigners Speak of Relief at Rejection of Assisted Suicide Bill," Right To Life UK, September 11, 2026.
- Amy Curtis, "The Dutch Government Euthanized a Severely Disabled Child, and People Are Horrified," Townhall, September 16, 2026.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Final Solutions: Murderous Racial Hygiene, 1939-1945," Holocaust Encyclopedia.
- New York Association on Independent Living, statement opposing the Medical Aid in Dying Act (A.136/S.138), 2025.
