The more a population accepts killing as an acceptable response to human suffering, the wider the categories of acceptable euthanasia becomes–and the more people are killed.
Belgium validates that premise. In 2015, a record number of people died by lethal injection. From the Yahoo News story:
Belgium carried out more than 2,000 mercy killings last year, the most since euthanasia was controversially legalised in 2002, the government said Wednesday.
“There were 2,021 cases in 2015,” said a spokeswoman for the government’s euthanasia commission which oversees the legislation to ensure it is correctly applied.
This probably doesn’t tell the whole story. Nor is it likely that euthanasia rates will remain steady.
In the years to come, expect increasing numbers of people with all kinds of problems–terminal, psychiatric, chronic, aging, etc.–to be made dead by doctors.
To illustrate the astonishing number this represents. Belgium’s population is about 11 million. If the same rates of euthanasia deaths were conducted in the USA (population 330 million), it would amount to 60,000 medicalized killings a year! That would be about 165 a day.
If we don’t want to go there tomorrow, we need to stop the assisted suicide movement in its tracks today.