Issues relating to life and death go to the heart of human experience and the value we place on our own existence and that of others, especially in those relationships we care about most. This is no doubt because we are mortal and we know we are all going to die at some point in time. Our mortality makes us fundamentally vulnerable. This book has considered ethics in the context of human vulnerability. We are vulnerable because we can be affected by things across the lifespan, and we can be affected by things because we are physical beings – part of the world around us and subject to the passage of time. Consequently, a life can come to an end at any time. For this reason, death is not only completely normal, but inevitable. Nevertheless, death is typically regarded as something regrettable. As philosopher Bernard Williams notes, our experience of being alive is essentially of having an open-ended and indeterminate future. From this perspective, death is ‘an abrupt cancellation of indefinitely extensive possible goods’ (Nagel 1979: 9–10).

On May 16 2002, the Belgian parliament approved the original law permitting euthanasia. The law was voted in after three years of debate in parliament and within the Federal Advisory Committee on Bioethics. The focus of this chapter is an issue which has been of particular interest in recent public debates internationally: the extension of the law in 2014 to permit minors with ‘capacity of discernment’ to have access to euthanasia. Although the law now theoretically applies to Belgians of all ages, in reality, euthanasia for minors will be limited to older adolescents. This chapter considers how the issue of children’s access to euthanasia came to be considered and the process of reform including the positions and arguments of different entities. Also considered is parliament’s rationale for this change in the law. Of particular significance in the reform process was the view that the age barrier for euthanasia was perceived as arbitrary. The prime qualifier for a valid, well-considered and competent request should not be chronological age but mental age and maturity.