title: Explaining the emergence of euthanasia law in the Netherlands: how the sociology of law can help the sociology of bioethics.
abstract: The debate over the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia is most often seen to be the result of three changes in society: individualisation, diminished taboos concerning death and changes in the balance of power in medicine. The fact that these changes occurred in many western countries but led to legalisation in only a few makes this claim problematic. I examine whether socio-legal propositions, with respect to the emergence of laws which focus on social control, offer a better approach to understanding the development of rules allowing and governing euthanasia. After a short sketch of the history of the Dutch law regulating euthanasia, I discuss these three societal changes in the light of shifts in the social control of medical behaviour that shortens life. I show that the Dutch relaxation of the prohibition of euthanasia goes together with new forms of social control: doctors' self control is complemented with second-party control (by patients), professional third-party control and governmental control. My work calls attention to the fact that bioethics is part of larger systems of social control.
authors.affiliation: RUG, Vakgroep Rechtstheorie, The Netherlands. h.a.m.weyers@rug.nl
authors.forename: Heleen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Weyers
mesh_terms: D001293:Attitude to Death; D001675:Bioethics; D005065:Euthanasia / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006801:Humans; D009426:Netherlands; D012926:Social Control, Formal