IF YOU GIVE PERMISSION, YOU SHOULD (NOT) EXPECT TO LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES. Dutch Supreme Court: Doctors can euthanize dementia patients

The Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled this week that doctors can lawfully euthanize patients with severe dementia as long as the patient signed off on it while legally capable.

The Netherlands’s highest court reaffirmed a practice that was already being carried out on rare occasions by ruling that patients can be euthanized if they issued written directives in the past when they still had full mental faculties, according to the Associated Press.

The cases centered around last year’s acquittal in a district court of a doctor who euthanized a 74-year-old woman. Prosecutors attempted to make the case that there were signs the woman may have changed her mind after giving permission to be euthanized.