He was a longtime politician with conservative roots but campaigned on many liberal causes. Van Agt served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1977 to 1982. He later became the European Union's ambassador to Japan and the United States.
Photos of the couple from their decades-long career as public figures often show them walking in tandem: waving to crowds through a car window, voting together at a campaign site, kissing at a public event.
Dutch public broadcaster NOS reported that the Van Agts' family's health had deteriorated in recent years. The former prime minister did not fully recover after suffering a brain hemorrhage in 2019, which happened while giving a speech at a ceremony commemorating the Palestinians. Eugenie's health problems have remained largely private.
“I feel like it's nice, honestly, that you're living your life together, and you happen to be seriously ill with no chance of getting better, and you're ready to go, and you want to go together.” Maria Karpiak, director of the gerontology program at California State University, Long Beach, said:
She said that when it comes to the right to choose death, the Netherlands is considered a “model” for any American legislation on the subject.
At least 29 couples — or 58 people — died together via bilateral euthanasia in 2022, the most recent year for data released by the country's regional euthanasia review committees. That's more than double the number of 13 couples who did so in 2020, when the commission first started looking for partners specifically, but it still represents only a small fraction of the 8,720 people who died legally by euthanasia or assisted suicide in the Netherlands. That year.
“This is likely to happen more and more,” said Rob Edens, press officer at NVVE, a Dutch organization that focuses on research, lobbying and education about medically assisted suicide and euthanasia in the Netherlands. “We continue to see a reluctance among doctors to offer euthanasia based on age-related case backlog. But it is allowed” in the country’s legal guidelines, he said in an email.
Medically assisted suicide is when someone administers a lethal dose themselves while a doctor is present, while euthanasia occurs when a medical professional administers the dose. Both are legal in the Netherlands when specific criteria are met. (Some groups prefer the term “medical assistance in dying,” or MAID, because of the religious and social stigma surrounding suicide.)
Euthanasia is illegal in the United States, but assisted suicide is permitted in D.C. and at least 10 states: Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Jersey, Maine, and New Mexico. Eligibility requirements tend to be strict across the country, but there are differences between jurisdictions, Karpiak said.
The Netherlands, a country of about 18 million people, has allowed medically assisted suicide and euthanasia since 2002. It requires that individuals voluntarily request to end their lives in a “well-considered” way, with a doctor’s approval. They are experiencing “unbearable suffering without any hope of improvement.”
Next, another doctor has to agree that the person is eligible, and doctors can choose whether or not to participate in the procedure. After each death, doctors are required to notify the regional review committee, which examines whether each case was handled legally. Couples seeking bilateral euthanasia must apply and go through the review process individually, with separate doctors.
“The accumulation of age-related complaints can lead to unbearable and desperate suffering,” Edens said, explaining the Dutch guidelines. “The expectation is that if doctors are increasingly willing to offer euthanasia when there is a backlog of geriatric complaints, the number of euthanasias will double [cases] “It will increase.”
Research suggests that older Americans are more likely to die after losing a spouse, especially in the first few months after their death. While the cause of this phenomenon is unclear, studies have found that grieving partners have higher rates of inflammation and are more susceptible to heart attacks and strokes, often due to stress-induced changes in blood pressure, heart rate, and blood clotting.
“The first thing that comes to my mind is the widowhood effect,” Karpiak said, referring to Van Agts' choice to die by bilateral euthanasia. “I have a 96-year-old grandmother, and she says, ‘I'm not going anywhere!'” But if I have a partner and he's my person, and we're both at the end of our lives, is it worth it for him to go without me? Am I going to die of what I consider a broken heart? To have a choice.”
