Dutch Doctor On Trial For Euthanasia Gynecologist Charged With Killing Infant With Birth Defects

The Western world’s most liberal euthanasia policy is being tested in a court case involving a newborn so painfully deformed that even prosecutors don’t want her killer punished.

“Life was more threatening for Rianne than death,” said the doctor who gave 3-day-old baby a deadly injection.

The question before the court: Was he wrong to kill her without her consent?

As the trial opened Wednesday in District Court, Dr. Henk Prins testified that no medical treatment could have saved Rianne Quirine Kunst, and he acted to spare her unbearable pain.

When the infant was born in 1993, she suffered from hydrocephaly, spina bifida and leg deformities. Prins said she screamed when touched and would have survived in excruciating pain at most several months.

“She was in the strangling grip of death,” Prins said. “I wanted to let the ongoing process of life-to-death end for Rianne, and for her parents, in the most acceptable way possible.”

After consulting with several specialists who supported his diagnosis and getting the approval of Rianne’s parents, Prins said, he injected her with a sleep-inducing drug and a muscle paralyzer that stopped her breathing.

Rianne died in her mother’s arms 15 minutes later.

“A lot of people think I’ve taken a step too far … but I took it because I was certain that it was best for Rianne,” Prins testified.

Euthanasia is illegal in the Netherlands but has wide public support. Religious groups have repeatedly blocked legalization, and the practice is punishable by up to 12 years in prison.

But in what is known as the industrialized world’s most tolerant euthanasia policy, doctors who follow a series of guidelines - stipulating that incurably ill patients in unrelievable pain must repeatedly and lucidly ask for death - can expect immunity from prosecution. No doctor has ever been jailed in a euthanasia case in the Netherlands.

The prosecutor’s office had originally decided to drop charges against Prins, a 48-year-old gynecologist, because the killing met the specifications that the patient be suffering unbearable pain and that consulting physicians approve.

But Rianne’s death did not meet the guideline that patients express their own death wish.

Justice Minister Winnie Sorgdrager insisted on a trial to set a legal precedent.

“This case serves the primary interest of developing judicial standards and enforcement,” Public Prosecutor Gerard Botman told the court.

Defense lawyer Eugene Sutorius called his client a scapegoat and said it is up to Parliament - not the courts - to regulate euthanasia.Prins has become something of a hero in the Netherlands and was treated accordingly in court, where both judge and prosecutor praised him for honesty and openness.”I know it’s not easy for you … but it must be solved judicially,” said District Court Judge B. Posch.

Botman urged the three-judge panel to find Prins guilty, but not to punish him.Rianne’s parents, who were believed to be listening to testimony from an anteroom, did not testify.