Physically, 28-year-old Zoraya ter Beek, who lives in a small Dutch town near the German border is, if not a picture of perfect health, fairly close to it.
Yet, she has scheduled her death, citing her debilitating depression, autism, and borderline personality disorder as her motive.
According to a The Free Press exposé, the 28-year-old Zoraya will undergo euthanasia—that is, be killed with the help of doctors—in May. According to ter Beek, her psychiatrist told her “there’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never gonna get any better.”
With treatment options—at least in the eyes of the person who was supposed to help her—seemingly exhausted, she decided to call it quits. “I was always very clear that if it doesn’t get better, I can’t do this anymore,” she said. Neither her family nor her 40-year-old loving boyfriend—who will be present during her last moments and with whom she shares a house—were able to dissuade her.
The matter has provoked considerable attention on social media, with scores of sympathetic strangers have sent hopeful messages on social media, encouraging Zoroya to reconsider.
Zoraya remains adamant, however. The bio of her X account, made non-public in the wake of the media attention paid to her, now curtly reads: “NO ‘medical’ or ‘spiritual’ advice.”
According to The Free Press, the 28-year-old already knows the specifics of how and where she will die. At her home, she will be given two medications—first a sedative and then a drug that causes cardiac arrest. As laid down in her will, she desires to be cremated afterward, and have her ashes scattered in a nearby forest.
Theo Boer, a healthcare ethics professor at Protestant Theological University in Groningen—who served for a decade on a euthanasia review board in the Netherlands—told the publication:
I entered the review committee in 2005, and I was there until 2014. In those years, I saw the Dutch euthanasia practice evolve from death being a last resort to death being a default option.
He ultimately resigned.
In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to make euthanasia legal. Since then, the floodgates have well and truly opened—and the ‘slippery slope’ argument has been proven to be prescient.
In 2023, the country recorded 9,068 deaths by euthanasia—representing 5.4% of all the country’s deaths, which is up from 5.1% from the previous year.
Currently, to qualify for the procedure in the Netherlands, the patient must be experiencing unbearable suffering (either physically or mentally) with no prospect of improvement—a stipulation clearly open to interpretation in the broadest of ways.
In February, the 93-year-old former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt and his wife tragically and very publicly resorted to the option of ‘double euthanasia,’ dying while holding hands.
The van Agts could have done this quietly and without media coverage. Instead, the well-known couple chose to make their death a political statement, deliberately leaving a legacy contributing to making suicide an acceptable—or even desirable—choice.
