In some parts of the world, people who are terminally ill can ask a doctor to help them end their lives and their suffering on their own terms.

We've talked on this show about how such requests are increasingly common in Canada,

but the Netherlands is really considered the global pioneer in this form of euthanasia.

Most Dutch people support the availability of this for people in unrelenting physical pain.

But it's far more controversial, even there, for people suffering from the torments of mental

illness, and that help in dying is available even to people whose brains have not finished

developing. From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. Dutch 16 and 17-year-olds can request

euthanasia for mental illness as long as their parents have been consulted.

And with parental consent, kids as young as 12 can request to die with physician-prescribed lethal drugs, even if their bodies are healthy.

As my guest has learned, this idea is jarring even to many people who firmly support the right

to die in other contexts. Charles Lane is a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise

Institute and author of the Atlantic article when mentally ill teenagers ask to be put to death.

Chuck, welcome to think.

Thank you for having me on your podcast.

This is probably obvious, but we'll say this conversation will take us into terrain that

may be very painful for some listeners, so we would just ask that you be mindful about

whether this is something you want to listen to.

All right, Chuck, is there something about Dutch culture that primes people to broadly support

the right to die by euthanasia.

Yes. When I talk to people in the Netherlands, they're emphatic about the special

characteristic in their cultural tradition, which values both a sense of individual autonomy and choice, and on the other side of that, a sense of

non-interference in other people's choices.

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