One of the issues brought up inthe debate over physician-assisted suicide is the slippery slope argument: Ifphysician-assisted suicide is made legal, then other things will follow, withthe end being the legalising of euthanasia for anyone for any reason or noreason.

The experience of other countries shows that this is not theoretical.The Netherlands is an example of the slippery slope on which legalising physician-assisted suicide puts us. In the 1980s the Dutch government stopped prosecutingphysicians who committed voluntary euthanasia on their patients (Jackson2013, 931–932; Pateland Rushefsky 2015, 32–33). By the 1990s over 50 percent ofacts of euthanasia were no longer voluntary.

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This is according to the 1991Remmelink Report, a study on euthanasia requested by the Dutch government andconducted by the Dutch Committee to Study the Medical Practice ConcerningEuthanasia (Euthansia.com 2014; Patients’ Rights Council 2013a; Van Der Mass etal. 1991). In 2001 euthanasia was made legal. And in 2004 it was decided thatchildren also could be euthanized. According to Wesley Smith, in a Weekly Standard articlein 2004, “In the Netherlands, Groningen University Hospital has decided itsdoctors will euthanize children under the age of 12, if doctors believe theirsuffering is intolerable or if they have an incurable illness.

” The hospitalthen developed the Groningen Protocol to decide who should die. Smith comments,”It took the Dutch almost 30 yearsfor their medical practices to fall to the point that Dutch doctors are able toengage in the kind of euthanasia activities that got some German doctors hangedafter Nuremberg. For those who object to this assertion by claiming that Germandoctors killed disabled babies during World War II without consent of parents,so too do many Dutch doctors: Approximately 21% of the infant euthanasia deathsoccurred without request or consent of parents. (Smith2004)”.Euthanasiain the Netherlands went from illegal but not prosecuted, to legal, to includingchildren.And it is not stopping there (Schadenberg2013). Now, in 2011, Radio Netherlands reported that “theDutch Physicians Association (KNMG) says unbearable and lasting suffering shouldnot be the only criteria physicians consider when a patient requestseuthanasia.

” The association published a new set of guidelines, “which says acombination of social factors and diseases and ailments that are not terminalmay also qualify as unbearable and lasting suffering under the Euthanasia Act.”These social factors include “decline in other areas of life such as financialresources, social network, and social skills” (RNW2011). So, a person with non-life-threatening health problemsbut who is poor or lonely can request to be euthanized.Inanother example of the slippery slope to which physician-assisted suicideleads, in 2002 Belgium “legalised euthanasia for competent adults andemancipated minors.” In February of 2014, Belgium took the next step:Belgium legalised euthanasia bylethal injection for children…. Young children will be allowed to end theirlives with the help of a doctor in the world’s most radical extension of aeuthanasia law. Under the law there is no age limit to minors who can seek alethal injection. Parents must agree with the decision, however, there areserious questions about how much pressure will be placed on parents and/ortheir children.

(PatientsRights Council 2013b)Somesay that the US state laws concerning physician-assisted suicide are veryrestrictive and so there is no chance of erosion such as has happened in theNetherlands or Belgium (IntelligenceSquared 2014b, 34). Yet, if there is no moral or philosophicalbasis for PAS laws in the common good, then there is no telling how far changesto PAS laws will go in the future, and no stopping the changes.