This is because the Dutch feel that the risk of the baby turning out to have severe disabilities is too high to justify medical intervention.
Children with severe disabilities mean high education and health costs and ongoing social care needs, stretching out over decades to come.
Have the Dutch calculated that, on average, extremely premature babies are a loss-making proposition? Or is their policy based on a belief that the quality of life available to people with disabilities is so poor that the effort of sustaining them is not worth it?
Whatever their thinking, they have reached the wrong conclusion. The latest medical evidence shows that by the age of six, only one in five children who have survived the trauma of being born extremely premature has severe disabilities.
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