There’s something creepy about how far the Dutch have gone with the law that formally legalizes euthanasia. When it takes effect doctors will be able to euthanize sick children as young as 12.

French writer Emile Durkheim noticed a century ago that such intensely regulated environments as religious sects and military bases had higher suicide rates. Which makes you wonder what he would say about a society that decides to regulate suicide–that actually allows you to apply for it like a driver’s…

Euthanasia has been openly debated and researched for more than 20 years in Holland, which has a record of pragmatism in dealing with thorny social issues like drugs and abortion.

Frans Swarttouw, former chairman of the Fokker aircraft company and one of the Netherlands’ most colorful businessmen, bid an unusual farewell to his countrymen a few weeks ago. Stricken with throat cancer, the executive, 64, who once characterized an entrepreneur as “a guy who works hard, drinks himself into the…

Discussion on euthanasia in the U.S. Some American health professionals has cited a government report from the Netherlands on assisted suicide.

Whatever one thinks about the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, there can be little doubt of its judicial aggressiveness. At the time, the abortion issue, although hardly unsung, had been debated fully in only a few state legislatures. By grabbing the case, locating a previously unspecified…

Legalization has resulted in so much abuse that last year the Dutch government was forced to change its euthanasia laws.

“DID YOU ASK FOR YOUR HEMLOCK?” THANKS TO APPEALS-court judges in New York and California, this question will now be in your future.

You will be old, infirm and, inevitably at some point, near death. You may or may not be in physical distress, but in an age of crushing…

Dutch psychiatrist Chabot helped a woman, depressed but healthy patient to commit suicide. Officials charged Chabot with violating the strict guidelines, but wasn’t punished.

Hilly Bosscher endured 25 years of repeated beatings by an alcoholic husband before the marriage ended in divorce. One of her two sons committed suicide at 20; the other died of lung cancer at the same age. When the 50-year-old former social worker from the Dutch town of Ruinen went…

With Jack Kevorkian, discussion on legal assisted suicide arose in the U.S. Ethicists point to the world’s euthanasia laboratory, the Netherlands, where doctors are allowed to do so.

Death abides with all fanatics, not least because they are so often willing to risk it for their cause. It presses close around Jack Kevorkian, the doctor who has made death his specialty, closer still last week as he returned to the practice that so often had seemed destined…

Dutch parliament approved the world’s most liberal rules on euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide. Both practices are still technically illegal, but doctors, following rules, won’t be charged.

IN MOST PLACES, A DOCTOR WHO HELPS A TERMINALly ill patient commit suicide could face prosecution. But not in the Netherlands, which has just stepped into the vanguard of the right-to-die movement. Its parliament approved the world’s most liberal rules on euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide. Both practices are still technically…

Dutch leniency is aimed at isolating and controlling a problem under supervision of the authorities, but there appears to be an increasingly consensus: It has grown out of hand.

Ed van Thijn considers himself a tolerant man, but he readily admits that he is no longer as broad-minded as he was when he became mayor of Amsterdam in 1983. At that time the Dutch city of 700,000 was notorious as the drug capital of Europe, a place where hashish…

Mrs. Postma, a doctor, gave her mother an injection with morphine, whose mental suffering became unbearable. She was given one-week suspended sentence and a year’s probation.

“My mother was very ill,” explained Mrs. Geertruida Postma. “A breast had been removed, she had had a cerebral hemorrhage, she was partly paralyzed, could hardly speak, had pneumonia and was deaf. Again and again she had told me and my husband, ‘I want to leave this life. Please help…