Here is some things that have happened in the very civilised continent of Europe:

Between October 2007 and December 2011, 100 people went to a clinic in Belgium’s Dutch-speaking region with depression, or schizophrenia, or, in several cases, Asperger’s syndrome, seeking euthanasia. The doctors, satisfied that 48 of the patients were in earnest, and that their conditions were “untreatable” and “unbearable,” offered them lethal injection; 35 went through with it.

These facts come not from a police report but an article by one of the clinic’s psychiatrists, Lieve Thienpont, in the British journal BMJ Open. All was perfectly legal under Belgium’s 2002 euthanasia statute, which applies not only to terminal physical illness, still the vast majority of cases, but also to an apparently growing minority of psychological ones. Official figures show nine cases of euthanasia due to “neuropsychiatric” disorders in the two-year period 2004-2005; in 2012-2013, the number had risen to 120, or 4 percent of the total.

Next door in the Netherlands, which decriminalized euthanasia in 2002, right-to-die activists opened a clinic in March 2012 to “help” people turned down for lethal injections by their regular physicians. In the next 12 months, the clinic approved euthanasia for six psychiatric patients, plus 11 people whose only recorded complaint was being “tired of living,” according to a report in the Aug. 10 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.

…

In 2013, euthanasia accounted for one of every 28 deaths in the Netherlands, three times the rate of 2002. In the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, one of every 22 deaths was due to euthanasia in 2013, a 142 percent increase since 2007.

That’s from a Washington Post piece written by Charles Lane.

I am opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide in all cases. The tough cases that I have to face are those where a patient is going to die soon, and that person is in great pain. My answer to that is palliative care and pain relief: I don’t believe in stopping natural death by any means necessary, and if relieving someone’s pain effectively has the side effect of hastening their death such that they die in a week instead of two, then so be it.

I believe that the difference between caring for someone so that they die well, and killing them, is all the difference in the world.

I’m satisfied with that stance. I’ve thought about it a great deal, and I can stand over it. I don’t have to avert my gaze or change the topic or accuse my opponents of scaremongering, or any of it.

To the people who disagree with me, the people who think that some assisted suicides are just and merciful: is this worth it? Is one in 28 deaths worth it? Is euthanasia for children under 12 worth it? Was the killing of countless people for “incurable” depression worth it? Was euthanising Ann. G for anorexia, or Eddy and Marc Verbessem because they were both deaf and beginning to lose their sight too, worth it? Was even one of those deaths an acceptable price?

The push for physician-assisted suicide is going to begin in Ireland soon, the Supreme Court having declared, in its infinite wisdom, that this is a question for the Oireachtas. Advocates will not talk much about Belgium or the Netherlands. Like very reasonable people, they’ll talk about Oregon, where there are Safeguards.

Never mind that in Oregon, where lethal drugs are supposed to be prescribed only when a patient has less than six months to live,“the time between writing the assisted-suicide prescription and death ranged from 0 to 698 days” according to the State of Oregon’s own report.

Never mind that there were 105 assisted suicide deaths in Oregon in 2014, up from 73 in 2013.

Never mind that only three of them received psychological asssessments.

Never mind this:

2001, Dr. Peter Reagan, an assisted-suicide advocate affiliated with CID, gave Michael Freeland a prescription for lethal drugs under Oregon’s law.  Freeland, 64, had a 43-year history of acute depression and suicide attempts. However, when Freeland and his daughter went to see Dr. Reagan about arranging a legal assisted suicide, Reagan said he didn’t think that a psychiatric consultation was “necessary.”

There is no slippery slope. There are Safeguards. Never mind.

There is a fantastic new resource out from the Anscome Bioethics Centre, collecting a huge amount of evidence on assisted suicide. The guide to the evidence collects in one place government reports from a variety of countries where euthanasia is legal, as well as studies and analyses that investigate the likely impact of a legal change on suicide prevention, disability rights, and gender equality.

It also, fascinatingly, examines opinion polls on the issue, and finds that the answers people give change radically depending on how you ask the question. I wonder how people would answer if they all had to read Charles Lane’s article first before being asked their opinion.

You can have a look through Anscombe’s evidence guide here.

I don’t think that many people will. I don’t think very much of this will get reported. I suspect that at this stage, you either get it or you don’t. I’d love to be wrong.