A Belgian man requested and was granted euthanasia after a botched gender reassignment operation left him feeling he was a “monster”.  The doctor who ended the man’s life says he was suffering physically and psychologically.

“Instead of starting a real new life I was incarcerated in a body that I did not wish. It was wrong when I was born as a girl.  As a boy I got a body that I didn’t want.”

Nathan Verhelst was born as Nancy 44-years ago to parents he says didn’t want a girl child.  He told a Belgian newspaper, “While my brothers were celebrated, I got a storage room above the garage as a bedroom.  ‘If only you had been a boy’, my mother complained. I was tolerated, nothing more.” 

The sex change operation left his chest mutilated and his surgically constructed male appendage was showing signs of rejection.

“When I looked in the mirror, I was disgusted with myself. My new breasts did not match my expectations and my new penis had symptoms of rejection. I do not want to be.. a monster.”

The case has ignited a conversation on legal euthanasia in Belgian, but the doctor who ended Verhelst’s life says it’s what the law was intended.

“The choice of Nathan Verhelst has nothing to do with fatigue of life,” said the physician who administered the euthanasia Dr. Wim Distelmans.  “There are other factors that meant he was in a situation with incurable, unbearable suffering.

“Unbearable suffering for euthanasia can be both physical and psychological. This was a case that clearly met the conditions demanded by the law.”