Euthanasia: Former Dutch PM Agt, and his wife end their lives ‘hand-in-hand’
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In the rarest of the rare cases of mutual love and respect, former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt and his wife Eugenie, both 93, chose to end their lives by legal duo euthanasia—assisted or mercy death—on February 5, after over 70 years of marriage.
The couple passed away in their hometown, Nijmegen, holding hands, the media reported on Wednesday.
Their funeral was a private one.
Both Agt and his wife were suffering from deteriorating health for some time before they chose to die. The former PM suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2019 and never fully recovered.
He and his wife were “very ill,” but “couldn’t live without each other,” and chose euthanasia, The Guardian reported.
Dries van Agt served as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1977 to 1982, during which he also founded the Christian Democratic Appeal Party. His political journey was marked by a commitment to his values, even after his time in office, as evidenced by his founding of The Rights Forum in 2009, an organization dedicated to advocating for Palestinian rights, the reports said.
The Rights Forum shared the news of the illustrious couple’s passing.
The concept of duo euthanasia, while still relatively uncommon, has seen a gradual increase in the Netherlands, with 58 cases reported in 2022.
The Forum said: “In consultation with the immediate family, we announce that our founder and honorary chairman Dries van Agt passed away on Monday, February 5, in his hometown of Nijmegen. He died together and hand-in-hand with his beloved wife Eugenie van Agt-Krekelberg, the support with whom he was together for more than seventy years, and whom he always continued to refer to as ‘my girl’.”
Elke Swart, spokesperson for the Expertisecentrum Euthanasie, said that each request for assisted death is rigorously evaluated individually to ensure it meets the stringent criteria set forth by Dutch law.
“Interest in this is growing, but it is still rare,” she said. “It is pure chance that two people are suffering unbearably with no prospect of relief at the same time and that they both wish for euthanasia,” Swart said.
Their deaths are now being seen as part of a growing trend in the Netherlands for “duo euthanasia,” or two people receiving a fatal injection simultaneously. Twentynine couples opted for euthanasia in 2022, up from 16 in 2021 and 13 in the year before.
Swart’s organization grants the euthanasia wish of about 1,000 people a year in the Netherlands. A couple’s requests for assisted death are tested against strict requirements individually rather than together. “Interest in this is growing, but it is still rare,” she said.
Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 2002 for six conditions, including unbearable suffering, no prospect of relief, and a long-held, independent wish for death.
