Former Christian Democrat PM Ruud Lubbers chose euthanasia, biography reveals

The decision by former Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers (CDA) to choose euthanasia at the end of his life was confirmed in the new biography, Ruud Lubbers, Een Slag Anders, written by Lennart Steenbergen. The onset of dementia after years of depression led to the decision to dictate how his life would end, Nieuwsuur reported.

Lubbers died in 2018 at the age of 78. Between 1982 and 1994, Lubbers led the CDA and was the prime minister of three Cabinets, making him the second longest-serving Prime Minister of the Netherlands after Mark Rutte.

Under Lubbers’ leadership, the Netherlands implemented a tolerance policy for euthanasia. This was despite Lubbers’ own party being vehemently against the D66 proposal that people should be allowed to choose how their lives end.

“Lubbers should have wanted nothing to do with the D66 idea that people be able to decide on their own lives. But Lubbers did not rule out that the patient, as he put it, could be guided to the end of life by the doctor,” Steenbergen wrote.

Lubbers went against his party’s wishes to keep euthanasia as a criminal offense. In 2001, a law was implemented that exempted doctors from prosecution for euthanasia if they met certain requirements.

In the end, Lubbers made use of this law himself. After years of depression and living an increasingly withdrawn life, the former prime minister was diagnosed with dementia. “The dementia was the reason for him to make arrangements for euthanasia in advance,” the biographer wrote. He died through euthanasia in his hometown of Rotterdam in February 2018.

Lubbers’ wife Ria died in June of this year. The couple married in 1962.