Oxford, England, Feb 17, 2022 / 12:00 pm
A new study has challenged the claim by euthanasia and assisted suicide advocates that legalizing the practices can “save lives.”
The peer-reviewed article “Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, and Suicide Rates in Europe,” published on Feb. 7 in the international, web-based Journal of Ethics in Mental Health, assessed the relationship between euthanasia or assisted suicide (EAS) and other types of suicide in European countries.
It concluded: “The non-assisted suicide rates have not declined relative to comparable non-EAS countries, whereas there have been very large increases in suicide (inclusive of assisted suicide) and in intentional self-initiated death, especially among women.”
The study was written by David Albert Jones, the director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, England. He is also the co-author of a 2015 analysis which found that U.S. states legalizing physician-assisted suicide saw “an increased rate of total suicides relative to other states and no decrease in non-assisted suicides.”