Netherlands assisted suicide group leader found guilty of distributing suicide drug.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Netherlands court have given light sentences to members of Coöperatie Laatste Wil (CLW) who were promoting the use of a suicide powder. They were also found to be collaborating with (Alex S) who was convicted in 2023 for assisting the suicides of at least 10 people but was known to have sold a suicide powder to at least 1600 people.

It is good that the Dutch court prosecuted Tineke B and Jos van Wijk but considering the pain and suffering of the families who lost loved ones, the sentence may not deter future similar crimes.

Jos van Wijk

The NL Times reported on July 4 that Tineke B. (74) and Jos van Wijk (76), the former chairman of (CLW) were convicted for collaborating with Alex S. Alex S was convicted last year of selling drug X to at least 1600 people. 

(CLW) is a Netherlands assisted suicide group that believes that everyone should have access to drugs for the purpose of suicide. They were known for promoting the use of drug X.

DutchNews.nl reported on July 18, 2023 that (Alex S) from Eindhoven Netherlands was convicted for selling a suicide powder, with instructions, to as many as 1600 people. (Alex S) was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in the suicide deaths of at least 10 people who were known to have died.

Jos van Wijk the former chairman of the Coöperatie Laatste Wil was originally arrested on September 30, 2021 for allegedly participating in a criminal organization with other CLW members being added to the prosecution list later.

The NL Times reported on July 4, 2024 that:

B. got a suspended prison sentence of 1 year with a probation period of four years. According to the court, she was involved in the assisted suicide of at least one woman and thereby caused a lot of suffering to the woman’s loved ones. “As a result of their mediation, this lady was given Drug X and an antiemetic with which she ultimately ended her life,” the court said. The woman’s daughter said in her victim statement that a distance occurred between her and her mother since her mother made contact with B. “As a result of which, she was unable to assist her mother in the final phase of her life in the way that she wanted,” the court said. That weighed heavily in B.’s sentence, the court said.

Van Wijk got a suspended prison sentence of 4 months and a probation period of 1 year. According to the court, as the director of CLW at the time, Van Wijk should have taken faster, clearer, and stricter action against the informal trade of the suicide drug. “He allowed a culture to continue in which drug X could be provided by the group. His intention to participate in the criminal organization can be deduced from the conscious development and continuation of a certain culture in which rules are broken and in which the man was even actively involved at times.”

According to the court, there was not enough evidence to prove that Erik van V. (75), Jos S. (75), and Marja K. (76) participated in that criminal organization. The court acquitted them. The OM asked the court to acquit another former director, Petra de Jong (71), and the court agreed with that request.

Ximena Knol, who was 19 years-old, (pictured on left) died in February 2018 after ingesting the suicide powder.

The Netherlands court seemed to ignore the fact that CLW members were promoting the use of the suicide powder in the media. 

On May 9, 2023, Canadian, Kenneth Law (57) was charged with two counts of aiding and abetting the suicide deaths of two people in Peel Region, through online sales of a substance that is lethal in high concentrations. Law sold the substance online for the purposes of aiding suicide. Law allegedly distributed 1200 packages of the suicide powder and is possibly linked to deaths in many countries.

Delaware Governor Carney needs to veto assisted suicide Bill HB 140 to protect your citizens most in need of real care and compassion, not killing.

The following open letter was sent by Dr Harvey Abernathy, Ph.D., M.S.S.W. to Delaware Governor John Carney on July 4, 2024.

Everyone needs to contact Delaware Governor John Carney and urge him to veto assisted suicide Bill HB 140. Email him at: john.carney@delaware.gov

Dr Jacqueline Abernathy

Dear Governor Carney,

I write today urging you to veto HB 140 to protect your citizens most in need of real care and compassion, not killing. I implore you out of deepest concern, not just for the people of Delaware but you personally as well, since you will bear responsibility for the deadly consequences HB 140 will undoubtedly inflict as written, but also the greater toll when the law is almost certainly expanded. I don't claim to know the future, but I do know the past and the history of state assisted suicide laws and I have no reason to believe that Delaware law would not be exploited as-is and reformed to remove safeguards and otherwise increase eligibility and access to death on demand. I speak as an expert on this very topic, a bioethicist with a Ph.D. in Public Administration and Policy and a bibliography of scholarly peer-reviewed publications on assisted suicide and end-of-life medical decision-making. Therefore, I am not offering a mere guess when I warn you that HB 140 presents immediate harm to your constituents and only stands to grow more dangerous with time.

The proverbial slippery slope is not a logical fallacy but rather, it is documented history. The supposed safeguards used to pass bills like HB 140 falsely suggest that state-sanctioned suicide can be safe. These are a smokescreen used to placate concerned legislators into voting to legalize assisted suicide for some in certain conditions, but afterwards, those qualifications and regulations are amended to include more disposable lives and easier, faster access to lethal poison. What protections in HB 140 you have been told will protect your constituents: not only do these flimsy regulations fail to prevent abuses but sooner rather than later, those provisions will be stripped from the law if you make the mistake of not vetoing HB 140. 

Insistence by pro-euthanasia lobbyists that there has been no documented abuses is widely debunked in scientific literature, even by staunch allies. A recent example just published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, “Medical aid in dying to avoid late-stage dementia,” gives examples, one by name, of people who were not terminally ill but starved and dehydrated themselves to qualify for assisted suicide. They brazenly call the voluntary stopping of eating and drinking (VSED) a “bridge” to access suicide assistance, but a better term is “loophole”- a cruel way for those who want to die to kill themselves slowly until someone prescribes poison to speed things along. Abuses of state laws like HB 140 are usually addressed by reforming the statutes, but sadly, cases like these are used as rationale by lawmakers to relax or outright remove existing protections altogether so people who aren’t terminally ill let alone dying would no longer “need” to torture themselves through dehydration and starvation long enough to obtain help to die by suicide in a faster, easier way.

State laws have never been reformed to fix significant issues, like how researchers revealed in the British Medical Journal way back in 2008 that Oregon doctors were failing to make required psychiatric referrals – only 2 out of 60 patients (3.3%) received a psychiatric referral. Instead of addressing this issue, lawmakers added more discretion to the law in 2019 to exempt the 15-day waiting period in certain cases. The law was reformed again in 2023, but not to fix implementation abuses, just to drop the residency requirement to endanger vulnerable people in other states. The latest Oregon Health Authority report now shows that of the 367 patients who died by assisted suicide in 2023, only 3 were referred for a psychiatric assessment. That is fewer than 1% (.08). Likewise, even when you exclude the 23 non-residents, failure to enforce existing supposed safeguards helps explain the nearly 6-fold increase from 60 in 2008. Unreformed and purposefully relaxed safety standards are what have allowed the death toll to climb 573% since the 2008 BMJ article. Once a state embraces killing over caring, the killing only increases. What may seem reasonable now will certainly not remain so if you do not veto HB 140.

Governor, the bottom line is that you should not be at peace with signing any law that declares entire groups of human beings as disposable. My goal here is to inform you that what supposed safeguards may comfort you in the current draft of HB 140 are more than just arbitrary criteria for determining what lives don’t matter: these limits for who may access poison are clearly fungible and changeable for the worst. History proves it. On principle, you should reject any unjust law that relegates any population to a lesser status as second-class citizens who get suicide assistance vs. everyone else who gets suicide prevention when they cry out for help. You may be okay with how HB 140 decides what Delaware residents in desperate circumstances get pushed off the ledge on request to fall to their death (rather than talked down from the ledge as we usually do), but I assure you that the qualifications on which lives don't matter will likely expand to other populations if you make the mistake of signing HB 140 and opening this Pandora's Box.

You are being presented a choice that is literally vital. To decide not to veto HB 140 is to sign off on a state-wide death warrant for those most vulnerable. This is your moral duty and a burden you do not want on your conscience. Learn from the past, listen to your innate instinct to protect those most in need of compassion and VETO HB140.

Sincerely,
Jacqueline Harvey Abernathy, Ph.D., M.S.S.W.
Dallas, Texas

A Woman who admits to killing her 7 year old son more than 40 years ago, is campaigning for euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A UK woman who admitted to killing her 7 year old son more than 40 years ago by intentionally overdosing him is campaigning for the legalization of euthanasia in the UK.

Harriett Sherwood reported for the Guardian on July 3 that:

A woman has admitted giving her terminally ill seven-year-old child a huge dose of morphine to end his suffering more than 40 years ago.

Antonya Cooper said her son Hamish had experienced “horrendous suffering and intense pain” as a result of his stage four cancer and “beastly” treatment.

“On Hamish’s last night, when he said he was in a lot of pain, I said: ‘Would you like me to remove the pain?’ and he said: ‘Yes please, mama’,” Cooper, 77, told BBC Radio Oxford.

“And through his Hickman Catheter, I gave him a large dose of morphine that did quietly end his life.”

As much as I share sympathy concerning the suffering Hamish experienced, there were other options than killing him.

Further to that, Hamish was a child, he was not capable of consenting, but even more, his mother only asked him if he wanted the pain to go away. He wasn't asked if he wanted her to kill him.

When asked by Radio Oxford if her son knew that she was going to kill him, Cooper responded:

She said: “I feel very strongly that at the point of Hamish telling me he was in pain, and asking me if I could remove his pain, he knew, he knew somewhere what was going to happen.

“But I cannot obviously tell you why or how, but I was his mother, he loved his mother, and I totally loved him, and I was not going to let him suffer, and I feel he really knew where he was going.”

She added: “It was the right thing to do. My son was facing the most horrendous suffering and intense pain, I was not going to allow him to go through that.”

As sad as this story is, it shows how dangerous it is to legalize euthanasia. Once legal, similar cases of doctors killing their patients, without consent, will happen.

Further to that, euthanasia is not legal in the UK and yet Cooper is promoting the case for expanding the law to killing children.

Hamish needed pain and symptom management. He needed care not to be killed.

Delaware Governor John Carney needs to veto assisted suicide Bill HB 140.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Everyone needs to contact Governor John Carney and urge him to veto assisted suicide Bill HB 140. Email him at: john.carney@delaware.gov

Carney has 10 days to decide to sign or veto the bill. The bill passed on June 25.

In a roller coaster ride of votes, the Delaware Senate passed assisted suicide Bill HB 140 on June 25 by an 11 to 10 vote during a second vote on the bill.

On June 20 I reported that the Delaware Senate defeated the assisted suicide Bill HB 140 by a 9 to 9 vote. I thanked the many Delaware citizens who worked to defeat the bill.

In a 2022 interview, Delaware Governor John Carney stated that he opposed assisted suicide. He stated:

“Ultimately, though, I believe enabling physicians to facilitate suicide crosses a boundary that I’m just not comfortable crossing.”

Eleven Delaware Senators voted to legalize assisted suicide after an assisted suicide lobby leader lied to them three times during the Senate hearing.

For more information read: 

• The Delaware Senate would have been right to defeat the assisted suicide bill (Article Link).

People Magazine article is "selling" couple euthanasia.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Vanessa Etienne wrote an article that "sells" couple euthanasia that was published by People Magazine on July 1, 2024 titled: Husband and Wife, 70 and 71, die together through euthanasia: there is no other solution. 

People Magazine also promoted the Brittany Maynard assisted suicide death in 2017.

This article is about a Netherlands couple from Friesland, Jan Faber (70) and Els van Leeningen, who by couple euthanasia. Here is the sales pitch:

After meeting in kindergarten, Jan Faber, 70, and his wife Els van Leeningen, 71, — from Friesland — had a lifelong partnership. The couple was married for nearly five decades. Jan worked as a sports coach while Els was a primary school teacher.

However, Jan struggled for years with back pain and even after surgery in 2003, he saw no improvements. His chronic pain ultimately left him unable to work and he often spoke about euthanasia, telling his family he didn’t want to live with his physical limitations.

In November 2022, Els was diagnosed with dementia. “This is very good,” she told BBC, pointing to her body. “But this is terrible,” she added, pointing to her head. With both of their conditions declining, Jan’s discussion of euthanasia became more of a reality. The pair ultimately opted for duo-euthanasia — to end their lives together.

The euthanasia deaths of Jan and Els is sold differently than most euthanasia deaths. Neither Jan or Els are terminally ill. These deaths are sold as part of a "love story." They met in Kindergarten and were married for nearly five decades.

Selling death as part of a love story is like death porn. Let's call it what it is - The couple did not die together, they were killed together.

Stories like this that drive acceptance of euthanasia.