The push to pass euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide laws over the past few years has seen a global rise and acceleration of various jurisdictions legalising and normalising assisted suicide. New Zealand, Austria, and Spain all legalized it in 2021, with parts of Australia doing the same in 2022. In Italy, the first assisted suicide took place in 2022. And most recently, the United Kingdom, in late November last year, took the first step in passing a physician-assisted suicide measure that would open the door to the practice of allowing doctors to help people take their own lives.
France, Scotland, and Ireland are contemplating similar measures, as well as 19 other jurisdictions that have some form of physician-assisted suicide on the books. In the USA, 10 states and the District of Columbia have legislated physician-assisted suicide, with other states like Delaware, New York, and Maryland looking to secure similar laws.
In countries like Belgium and the Netherlands, where physician-assisted suicide has been legal for more than 10 years (in Belgium and the Netherlands since 2002), those eligible for death by a physician are not just the terminally ill, but those with “chronic, nonterminal, or treatment-refractory illness,” with treatment-refractory illnesses being those conditions that do not respond to treatment. Off growing concern is Canada, which has the most aggressive assisted suicide laws where MAID (medical assistance in dying) is now the fifth leading cause of Canadian deaths and access to MAID services are no longer confined to the terminally ill but can also apply to individuals who are homeless, feeling lonely after the death of a loved one or/and in despair.
In a day and age where there is a growing epidemic of loneliness and despair, we should not be encouraging a culture of death as the antidote to life and its challenges.
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