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The ever-expanding parameters of euthanasia have not gone unnoticed by the country’s small but outspoken collection of Christian activists. To be sure, the Netherlands—once a bastion of John Calvin’s austere brand of Protestantism—has little taste for piety today. Although roughly half of the population claims some form of Christianity as its religion, 70% of the population “rarely or never” attends a house of worship. Still, the devoutly Christian population that does exist in the Netherlands adamantly opposes the country’s euthanasia policy. The principal face of Dutch Christian activism is Cry For Life, an evangelical pro-life foundation that organized demonstrations outside Parliament during the 2001 vote to legalize euthanasia. Critics believe that removing limitations on euthanasia threatens to send the country down a moral “slippery slope,” eroding legal protections until the country eliminates all standards for the preservation of human life. In a militantly secular county like Holland, however, vigorous opposition from religious groups is not enough to change the country’s culture of euthanasia. If four hundred years ago Holland was renowned for its unwavering commitment to doctrinaire Calvinism, today Holland pursues secular dogmas with equal energy. It is almost as if Dutch Calvinism has morphed into a devout secularism led by a clergy of politicians and doctors that demand fealty to all their doctrines, be it legalized prostitution, the legitimization of recreational drug use, or physician- assisted suicide. The result is a political atmosphere in which the secular establishment conflates morally-grounded protest with religious devotion, dismissing opponents of euthanasia as members of a fundamentalist fringe.

However tempting it may be to simply accept the binary politics of the secular-religious divide, the debate over euthanasia in the Netherlands must transcend questions of religious affiliation. Whatever one thinks of the religious justification for the “slippery slope” argument, a cursory overview of euthanasia’s legal progress in the Netherlands quells the impulse to quickly dismiss it as fallacy: since euthanasia was decriminalized in 1974, Dutch physicians have slowly been granted near-limitless jurisdiction over the lives of their patients. It comes as no surprise that some 10,000 Dutch citizens now carry “Declaration of Life” cards which, in the event of an emergency, request that “under no circumstances a life-ending treatment be administered.” Indeed, the extraordinary power legally afforded to doctors is magnified by a rampant disregard for protocol: despite the lenient judicial attitude embodied in Dr. Van Oijen’s mild sentence, a 2001 survey found that Dutch doctors fail to report roughly half of the euthanasia procedures they perform. Perhaps most disturbingly, the acceptance of euthanasia among the mainstream has come at the expense of support for palliative care. That a country of 16 million people possesses a total of 84 hospice beds should be appalling to anyone, regardless of creed.

Unless the dissenting religious activists of Dutch society learn how to win over their skeptical opponents through legal and ethical argumentation rather than theological rhetoric, one can be sure that Dr. van Oijen’s approach to end-of-life care will continue to gain ground, until the horror he advocates is reduced to a mere banality.

Lucas Kwong is a junior English major at Yale University.