Autistic teenager euthanized in the Netherlands.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Yes, the title is correct. 

An Autistic teenager, in 2023, was killed by euthanasia in the Netherlands. Some people might not care, but I have an autistic son.

This is not about terminal illness or uncontrolled suffering, not that I would agree to kill a person who is terminally ill or who needs pain and symptom management. This was a young autistic person with sensory issues who experiences the world in a different way. This killing of an autistic person, is based on a eugenic ideology.

I oppose killing people but it is a eugenic ideology that allows a psychiatrist to kill an autistic person by lethal poison. To make a decision that life with autism is worse than death, and so much so that the psychiatrist kills the person is to believe that some lives are not worth living. This eugenic ideology is very dangerous.

For those who believe that this story cannot be true, Sharon Kirkey published an article in the National Post on March 23, 2026 titled: Dutch doctors euthanized an autistic teen. Why some say that should be a 'wake-up call' for Canada. Kirkey explains:

The boy, aged between 16 and 18, had described his life as “joyless.” He’d struggled with anxiety and mood-related problems, and where he fit in, in the world. Oversensitive to stimuli, “every day was an ordeal he had to get through,” according to the latest annual report from the Netherlands’ regional euthanasia death review committees. “In the final weeks before his death, he lay in bed the whole time.”

Kirkey reports that young man's doctor was convinced that there was no prospect for improvement. As a father of a son with autism, I consider this statement to be ridiculous. Yes, the young man would always be autistic, but autism is based on his sensory perception. As a human, he would have difficult times, but with good care he would change.

In her July 2023 article, Meghan Schrader, an autistic woman who now works as a disability instructor in Texas, explains how she went through an incredibly difficult and psychotic time. We are fortunate that Meghan didn't live in the Netherlands and wasn't being treated by a eugenic psychiatrist who was willing to kill her.

Dr Sonu Gaind, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and a past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association was interviewed by Kirkey. She reports:

The Dutch experience “should be taken as a wake-up call,” said Dr. Sonu Gaind, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and a past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association.

“The threshold (for assisted death) in Canada is actually lower than the Netherlands,” Gaind said. “If MAID for sole mental illness is opened up in Canada, the numbers would significantly exceed what you see in the Netherlands.”

Charles Lane recently published an analysis, in the Atlantic, concerning the growth of euthanasia for psychiatric reasons. Kirkey explained:

While most euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands involve people with medical conditions such as cancer, 219 people whose suffering was largely due to one or more psychiatric illnesses died an assisted death in 2024, up from 88 in 2020.

Of the 2024 deaths, 111 involved people aged 30 to 60, 78 involved people 60 and over, and 30 deaths were among people aged 18 to 30. In 2023, two psychiatric euthanasia deaths involved a minor between the ages of 12 and 18. The teen with autism was one of them.

The Canadian parliament recently established another parliament (AMAD) euthanasia committee to once again examine the implementation of euthanasia for mental illness alone. I think that the Netherlands experience with euthanasia for mental illness alone is enough to tell us to reverse course and to not go there.

Gaind is sadly correct. There would be a higher percentage of euthanasia deaths for mental illness in Canada than in the Netherlands. The Netherlands define euthanasia as a "last resort" procedure, whereas in Canada, people can request and be killed by euthanasia without even try treatments that might result in the person getting better.