Noa Pothovan ***MNHQ adding trigger warning and further noting that the details of this story are disputed***

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Noa, 17, chose to end her life via euthanasia in the Netherlands.

According to the media, Noa was sexually assaulted at 11 and raped at 14. She suffered from PTSD and anorexia.

She supposedly saw herself as 'dirty'.

Time after time, girls are being subjected to the most awful cruelty at the expense of others who can't control their behaviour.

My understanding of feminism is about fighting for the protection of children.
It is about challenging victim blaming.
It is about calling out sexism and stereotypes.
It is about raising young girls to become confident and make decisions that suit their chosen life (SAHM, business owner, punk rocker, whatever).
It is about raising our boys to blossom into caring men who are respectful of boundaries and make positive choices for their lives too.
It is about checking our own behaviour and language.

Times have changed thanks to women talking and protesting. So much so that I read comments so often online along the lines of, 'feminists have equality now, so what are they moaning about.'

FWR members frequently discuss:

Justice for women and children who have suffered abuse.
Lack of mental health provision and healthcare for women and girls.
Body image.
Social media.

All of the above were part of Noa's story.

This is why women need to keep talking about women's rights, no matter how often we are called bigots, old fashioned, boring or ungrateful for being given a foot into the boardroom.

It is about ensuring that girls don't think that they are dirty. That we talk about our bodies and talk about sexual consent and respectful boundaries.

Noa:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7103019/Dutch-girl-17-legally-ends-life-euthanasia-clinic.html

I had hoped someone had posted a out this - I am. Truly shocked that the state has sanctioned this.

I know first hand how sexual assault and depression can affect you at that age. She was a child who needed our help not helping her die.

Apparently it is progressive to agree with this decision but I don't, t his was murder because society let her down, did not protect her and could not give treatment. Blood is on all their hands and definitely on the hands of the men that assaulted her.

More info, there has been vigirous discussion in my counselling groups, some agreeing and some disagreeing.

All English-language media are completely misreporting this story.
TL;DR: She wasn't euthanized.
In the Netherlands, the law recognizes two types of physician-assisted death/euthanasia:
• Actual euthanasia, where the physician performs the procedure.
• Physician-assisted suicide, where the physician provides the patient with the means to end their own life.
Late last year, this girl approached the End of Life clinic in The Hague with a question of whether she qualified for either of those. She was refused.
In her own words:
,,Ze vinden me te jong om dood te gaan. Ze vinden dat ik de traumabehandeling moet afronden en dat mijn hersenen eerst volgroeid moeten zijn. Dat duurt tot je 21ste. Ik ben er kapot van, want zo lang kan ik niet meer wachten.’’
Translated:
"They think I'm too young to die. They believe I should complete my therapy first, and that my brain needs to be fully grown. That takes until you're 21. I'm devastated, because I can't wait that long."
So, instead, she chose to stop eating and drinking.
In American medical literature, this is something that's commonly referred to as VSED: voluntary stopping eating and drinking.
VSED is a common alternative to euthanasia in places where euthanasia is illegal, because it "exploits" a simple but fundamental principle: consent. Patients have the right to refuse treatment, after all.
It's used as an alternative to euthanasia in the Netherlands as well. And as the Dutch Medical Association's guidelines note:
Under the Medical Treatment Contracts Act, a patient has the right to receive clear information from the physician about his medical condition, the prognosis and treatment options. Based on the information provided, the patient can either choose to grant or not grant care providers consent to provide treatment, nursing or care. A patient always has the right to decide against treatment, nursing and care, or against specific aspects thereof. Should the patient not grant consent, the care providers may not provide treatment, nursing or care.
Obviously, there's a way to get around that in case of mental illness: by getting a court order for involuntary treatment.
In fact, this girl had already undergone involuntary treatment on several occasions after several failed suicide attempts:
Noa werd in de afgelopen jaren heel vaak opgenomen, in ziekenhuizen, instellingen en specialistische centra. Met afgrijzen denkt ze terug aan dwangopnames in instellingen voor jeugdzorg. Ze droeg er alleen een scheurjurk, een jurk zo sterk dat die niet verscheurd kan worden. Een noodmaatregel om haar er van te weerhouden dat ze zichzelf van het leven berooft. De opnames hebben een traumatisch effect. ,,Nooit, nooit ga ik meer in de isoleer. Het is mensonterend.’’
Dwangmaatregelen zijn vernederend, zegt Noa. Ze zal nooit vergeten hoe ze naar de Arnhemse rechtbank werd gebracht, waar rechters besloten over gedwongen opname in een behandelcentrum. De aanblik van de ‘mensen in toga’s’ maakt een diepe indruk op haar. ‘Ik voel me haast een crimineel, terwijl ik mijn hele leven nog niet eens een snoepje heb gestolen uit een winkel’, schrijft ze in haar autobiografie.
Translated:
Noa has been admitted very often in recent years, to hospitals, institutions and specialist centers. Horrified, she recalls involuntary admissions to youth care institutions. She could only wear a tear-proof dress - an emergency measure to keep her from committing suicide. Being institutionalized had a traumatizing effect on her. "Never, never will I go into isolation again. It's degrading."
Coercive measures are humiliating, says Noa. She will never forget how she was taken to the Arnhem court, where judges decided on involuntary admission to a treatment center. The sight of the "people in gowns" stayed with her. "I almost feel like a criminal, even though I haven't so much as stolen a piece of candy in my life," she writes in her autobiography.
And last year:
Nog niet zo lang geleden werd ze in kritieke toestand, met ernstig ondergewicht en de dreiging dat vitale organen zouden uitvallen, opgenomen in ziekenhuis Rijnstate in Arnhem. Ze is zelfs in coma gebracht om haar met een sonde kunstmatig te kunnen voeden.
Not too long ago she was admitted in critical condition to a hospital in Arnhem, severely underweight and at risk of having vital organs cease functioning. She was even put into an induced coma so she could be fed through a feeding tube.
Now, back to last week.
She was refusing to eat and drink, which left her care providers with three choices:

1. Get a court order and force-feed the patient, saving her life for the moment at the cost of further infringing upon her bodily autonomy, with the near-certainty that it won't be the last time. Even assuming that she will eventually recover, you're looking at years of involuntary treatment and confinement of the kind that would traumatize even a person without mental health issues.
2. Do nothing and let her die in pain.
3. Provide her with pain relief.

In the end, this time, they decided to take the third option. You could argue that they should have picked the first option, and given her age, I might even be inclined to agree with that. But this wasn't euthanasia - it was a choice not to force a patient to undergo involuntary treatment. It has absolutely nothing to do with Dutch euthanasia laws, which do not cover a situation like this.

There was also the case of Aurelia Brouwers who took her life after living with the diagnosis of BPD. This is a diagnosis almost exclusively given to women who are suffering the after effects of trauma, often sexual violence and abuse. The lack of compassion, support and care given to these women is staggering and they are often seen as untreatable, a nuisance for self harming and overall difficult.

This is definitely a feminist issue.

Add the fact that abuse and rape is rarely convicted, add in the victim blaming, terrible care system and being given the stigmatising label of a personality disorder when women and girls are suffering the documented after effects of trauma and no wonder some are choosing the euthanasia.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-45117163

Gingerkittykat

Thank you for providing an accurate picture of what has actually happened.

I hope posters will read it and stop referring to this as state sanctioned suicide, it wasn’t.

I personally don’t want to force anyone to live in a state of torment. I wish she wasn’t tormented, traumatised and in pain. But she was. She was young, yes. But at 17, she can make her own choices. I don’t want to argue about whether we let people do this. We can’t stop them. We can, however, ease their pain at the end. I think that’s what happened here.

Thank you for the clarifications everyone about this poor girl.

In terms of the UK and right to die, this woman - Miss B - had to go to court way back in 2002 to stop a hospital treating her against her wishes (they put her on a ventilator despite a living will stating that she should not be artificially kept alive) when she suddenly became quadriplegic and unable to breathe.
The doctors fought her all the way insisting that she must be kept alive on a machine, unable to breathe or move even a finger for the rest of her life. It took a court judgement before she was allowed to refuse the treatment, be taken off the ventilator and die.

news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/22/newsid_2543000/2543739.stm

I haven't read all comments yet.

The reason I started this thread was to discuss the failings of others before her mental health decline.

There is another thread about euthanasia on chat I think.

Being discussed on Loose Women now.

Also, thank you to everyone who has dug out links to the mistakes in reporting.

Sexually violated 3 times by 4 men, first when aged 11. Too ashamed to speak about it. Instead ends up feeling she is inherently "dirty". This is what happens in our supposedly progressive society where we bend over backwards to NAMALT and change the language we use to obscure the cause of so much female suffering. Bad enough to have one's boundaries dismissed so many times and so young. Such a shame she wasn't helped to understand the problem was not her or her female body, but violent men.

Thanks for digging out a more accurate picture Ginger. I take back my comments about the doctors involved in her immediate end of life care.

I stand by my comments about the fact that so long as women's mental health is inextricably linked to being shat on by a sexist society which effectively condones sexual violence against women, euthenasia for mental health issues is a deeply problematic issue for feminists. It ceases to be an issue simply of individual choice and becomes an issue of society effectively allowing women to be abused, failing to provide any support for the aftermath of that abuse, then allowing them to be killed rather than face the expense or inconvenience of tackling the underlying causes.

I stand by my comments about the fact that so long as women's mental health is inextricably linked to being shat on by a sexist society which effectively condones sexual violence against women, euthenasia for mental health issues is a deeply problematic issue for feminists. And now, with the facts cleared up we can return to OPs original point, agree with Fermats and wonder what, if anything,any of us can do to change that?

Thanks to those who've added further info.

It's important that we recognise that it is a feminist issue and discuss it.

I've no wish to exploit Noa's memory, but we have to keep talking and we need to place the blame where it belongs.

There was also the case of Aurelia Brouwers who took her life after living with the diagnosis of BPD. This is a diagnosis almost exclusively given to women who are suffering the after effects of trauma, often sexual violence and abuse. The lack of compassion, support and care given to these women is staggering and they are often seen as untreatable, a nuisance for self harming and overall difficult.

This. It's a shocking injustice that women are abused as children then abused further for behaving in a way in which many women who were abused as children behave, this is behaviour that may have kept them safe and alive as kids that has been written into their neural pathways. It can be changed but people, including many medical professionals, are woefully ignorant about it. I am so angry at the moment about the abuse that women face, whilst others want to take away female only space that helps us heal.

Thanks for the clarification on the situation. I am still struggling given her age how this has happened.

It's so desperately sad, we wont let 17 year old vote, drink but we allow them the option to refuse life saving treatment? This poor girl has been let down by everyone.

You think she should have been forcibly tube fed some more Duggee? For how many more years?

Yes I do, as horrific as that is, I do think that. She was a child, she doesn't have the capacity to understand that things could get better and whilst I understand why the doctors took the course of action that they did I cannot ever believe it was the right thing to do.

HeyDuggeesCakeBadge

What if she was 18 and legally an adult? She could have turned 18 tomorrow. Would her mental capacity to understand increase overnight?

I just hope she is at peace now. I wish eternal suffering to the men who did this to her.

I don't think 18 is old enough to make such a tragic decision either. Its so. So horrid and I think I'm finding this so difficult to understand as someone else put this suffering on her, those vile men - the thought that this poor girl cannot ever grow up and find happiness because of what they did to her is perhaps clouding my thought process.

And yes, I truly hope she is at peace. This story has really affected me, deeply. This could have been me at that age, so perhaps I'm projecting. We'll never understand the true suffering of others.

I also think that letting a 1 year old make that decision was very questionable.

But I also think that you cannot separate her own view from that fact that she lives in a society that does allow euthanasia and accepts the idea that some lives are simply not worth living. And what seems to come out in such societies is a view which says, often quite strongly, that suffering is something which makes a life not worth living and cannot be overcome.

It's very much like the doctors in the Swedish film who said, "well, if a young women hates her breasts and is suffering, what can we do? We must help her." By which they mean, help her by cutting them off.

I am truly torn on this. As others have said, something has to be done for our troubled girls. But what message is this sending? What about the 15 year old girls who have been abused? What are they to think, that the only way out of their torment is to kill themselves? Most of us have suffered trauma at the hands of males, things can get better, and that is the message we should be getting out there. Not that suicide is the only option.

I truly hope something good comes of the publicity, something to help our suffering young girls. As has been said before, everyone knows a woman who has been raped, yet no one knows a rapist. Not enough is being done to stop this shit.

Thank you Goose and Flippin - you have eloquently said what I failed to.

HeyDuggeesCakeBadge

I don’t think there is ever an age to be making this decision. I wish there had been something to give her that sense of hope that she could recover from her suffering.

The focus needs to be on ensuring this never happens again not because the women aren’t allowed a way out of their suffering but because they were never suffering in the first place!