Foreign views[edit]
Dutch euthanasia laws are commonly put in a bad light in the United States and even proponents would rather not be associated with them.[10] The Netherlands is commonly under fire by conservative American politicians for its euthanasia policies, being accused of "killing senior citizens." In 2000, Republican Steve Forbes stated that Dutch doctors "routinely kill patients without the patients' permission because they want a hospital bed," suggesting that there are well-documented abuses of official policies.[11][12]
In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum falsely claimed that forced euthanasia accounted for 5% of all deaths in the Netherlands and that elderly Dutch people wear a bracelet reading “Do not euthanize me.” This claim was mocked by various Dutch sources and prompted the Dutch embassy to respond with relevant statistics disproving Santorum's claim,[13][14] but the lack of a formal statement by Dutch officials angered Dutch politician Frans Timmermans, who demanded minister of foreign affairs Uri Rosenthal to take a public stance against such assertions.[15][16]