The claim circulating on X through the account Protestia states that the Netherlands "aborted" an "almost 24 months old" child, describing it as the first case under a 2024 law permitting euthanasia for terminally ill children under 12. The core factual elements of this claim are well documented by multiple independent outlets.
According to reporting from CBS News, NL Times, Euronews, and ABC News 4, all published in late September 2026, Dutch officials confirmed that a child nearly 2 years old became the first person under the age of 12 to die by euthanasia under regulations expanded in 2024. The child was born extremely prematurely at 26 weeks and three days while the family was abroad, and developed extensive and irreversible brain damage, severe cerebral palsy, visual impairment, and a severe form of epilepsy known as infantile epileptic spasms syndrome. By the time of the procedure, doctors estimated the child's developmental age to be around 6 weeks, and concluded there was no prospect of improvement. The Netherlands' Review Committee on Late-term Abortions and Termination of Life of Neonates and Children aged under 12 reviewed the case and determined the physician "acted with due care." The child died at the end of 2025, and the Dutch Public Prosecution Service subsequently declined to prosecute the doctor.
The 2024 law itself is confirmed by the Dutch government's official website, which explains that termination of life is permitted for children aged 1 to 12 only when they are terminally ill, suffering unbearably, and have no prospect of improvement, with strict due-care requirements and independent review. The Netherlands first legalized voluntary euthanasia in 2002, making it the first country in the world to do so.
The framing of the claim as an "abortion" is misleading, however. The child was a toddler nearly 2 years old, not a fetus, and the procedure performed was euthanasia (termination of life), not abortion. While the Dutch review committee's name does include the word "abortions" because it also covers late-term abortions and neonatal cases, the 2024 law and this specific case concern euthanasia of a living child, not termination of a pregnancy. This distinction matters because conflating the two misrepresents both the medical procedure and the legal framework involved.
The claim's central substance — that the Netherlands carried out the first euthanasia of a child under 12 under the 2024 expansion, that the child was almost 24 months old, and that the child was terminally ill — is supported by direct, current evidence from multiple reliable outlets. The only material inaccuracy is the loaded use of the word "aborted," which a reasonable reader could interpret as describing a pregnancy termination rather than the euthanasia of a toddler. Because the main facts check out but the framing introduces a meaningful distortion, the claim is mostly true.
