I still marvel at people who think–even after decades of experience with these laws–that legalizing assisted suicide or euthanasia will remain limited to the few for whom nothing else can be done medically to prevent suffering. Not only is it not true, but it is never intended by euthanasia enthusiasts to be so constrained. Indeed, wherever killing as an answer to suffering is legalized, the numbers so dispatched continually rise, the guidelines expand, and euthanasia or suicide as a means of death becomes societally normalized.

In Belgium, that pattern continues. The Belgian Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia just issued a press release about its published euthanasia statistics for 2024–2025. A few observations:

As I perused the statistics, I was struck by how bloodless and stiflingly bureaucratic this killing machine has become. What was it that the philosopher Hanna Arendt said........

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