Parliament in the Netherlands voted yesterday to became the first country to legalise euthanasia. The lower chamber voted 104 to 40 to allow doctors to help patients die under strict conditions. The proposed law is expected to be put to a vote in the upper chamber next year. Approval there is seen as a formality.
Australia's Northern Territory legalised medically assisted suicide for terminally-ill patients in 1996, but repealed the law the following year.
Supporters of the Dutch bill, including many doctors, said it champions patients' rights and brings a long-standing practice into the open. Opponents, including small Calvinist opposition parties, said they fear it could be abused.
A series of court rulings and government guidelines since the 1970s has given more leeway to doctors to help a patient die, but the criminal code was never amended. This grey area left open the possibility of doctors being prosecuted for murder.
The new law sets out strict guidelines, demanding that adult patients must make a voluntary, well-considered and lasting request to die rather than face a future of continuous and unbearable suffering.
The doctor must have informed the patient about his or her prospects and reached the firm conclusion there was no reasonable alternative. A second physician must be consulted and the life must be ended in a medically appropriate way.
Religious opponents condemned the bill, drawing parallels with Nazi Germany. "In the Netherlands your life is no longer safe," Mr Bert Dorenbos of the Scream for Life organisation said.
"If doctors are not hesitating to kill people then they will not hesitate to withdraw medical treatment from people they do not like." The main opposition Christian Democrats (CDA) and smaller Calvinist parties also opposed the law.
A leading proponent the Liberal D66 party, applauded the vote as an important step forward. "This is for peple who are in great pain and have no prospect for recovery. These people want to die in a humane way, in a respectful way," the parliamentary leader, Mr Thom De Graaf, said.
The Royal Dutch Medical Association also supported the bill, saying it formalises in law mercy killing procedures used by doctors for 20 years.
Dutch doctors helped 2,216 patients to die in 1999 through euthanasia or assisted suicide - where the physician supplies the drugs but does not administer them - the most recent figures from euthanasia organisations show. About 90 per cent of the cases were cancer victims.
A highly controversial clause allowing children as young as 12 to choose to die even if their parents disagreed was dropped earlier this year.
Children between the ages of 12 and 16 can only ask for help to die with parental consent.
The Vatican criticised the Dutch parliament's vote yesterday, saying it violated human dignity.
"It is a very sad record for the Netherlands to become first to want to approve a law that goes against human dignity," said the Vatican spokesman, Dr Joaquin Navarro-Valls.
"The first problem this law poses is a very serious question of conscience, which doctors will have to face up to. Again, we are faced with a law of the state which opposes the natural law of human conscience," he said.
He said the Dutch law went against international declarations on medical ethics that had been adopted for years by the medical community.