Appeals court rejects bid to loosen assisted-suicide law

The government is not required to relax the rules on assisted suicide, the Court of Appeal in The Hague ruled Tuesday, rejecting a request from Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CLW), a right-to-die-how-you-choose organization. The decision upholds an earlier ruling by the district court.

CLW argued that the right to control one’s own life, as outlined in the European Convention on Human Rights, also includes the right to choose to die. The Court of Appeal disagreed.

In the Netherlands, only doctors are legally permitted to help someone end their life. They may do so by administering a lethal drug themselves (euthanasia) or by providing a lethal drink that the patient takes themselves (assisted suicide).

To qualify for a doctor’s assistance, patients must make a conscious decision to die and must be experiencing clear and hopeless suffering. Doctors who do not meet these legal requirements can face prosecution.

Assisting someone to die outside those strict rules is illegal. CLW argues that this restriction conflicts with every person’s right to control their own life.

This November, CLW—already under legal fire for distributing the suicide drug X—presented a new method for what it calls a “self-chosen end of life”: a suicide collar.

The “suicide collar” is a device developed by euthanasia activist Philip Nitschke that uses two inflatable balloons to compress the carotid arteries and baroreceptors in the neck. The compression causes rapid loss of consciousness followed by death, according to its designer.