The Australian state of Queensland recently published its fourth annual review following the legislation of “voluntary assisted dying” (VAD):
- 1,082 died by VAD between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026 ― 836 by euthanasia and 246 by assisted suicide
- VAD, which has only been legal since 1 January 2023, now accounts for ~3% of all deaths in the state
- The number entering the VAD process without prior palliative care has risen 40% in two years
To put those figures in a more familiar context, Queensland’s population is less than one-twelfth that of the UK’s. Extrapolated to a population our size, the number of state-assisted deaths would have exceeded 13,000.
In Western Australia, the chair of the VAD oversight board has disclosed that “in the 25/26 year, we had 541 deaths, which is about a 12 per cent increase on the previous year, and about a 181 per cent increase since we started the whole process five years ago.” ABC news reported that “the numbers are far greater than were predicted when the law came into effect, and account for 2.9 per cent of all deaths in Western Australia annually.”
We’ve also had new figures from Belgium, where 4,487 are reported to have died by euthanasia (and assisted suicide) in 2025, up 31% in just two years. Journalist Wesley J Smith adds that in only one year since legalization has Belgium seen a year-on-year fall, amid Covid restrictions in 2020.
Belgium’s 2025 euthanasia deaths included:
- Two under-18s
- 15 by “advance request” (no longer competent)
- 129 with mental illnesses (only 9 of those euthanised by psychiatrists)
- 5% were euthanised by GPs
Smith adds that:
“No policy is perfectly carried out, yet zero doctors were reported to courts for abuses. They rarely are anywhere euthanasia and assisted suicide are allowed. And on the few occasions when doctors have been reported, medical associations objected loudly because such cases could have a chilling effect on doctors’ willingness to kill patients.”
A co-chair of Belgium’s Federal Euthanasia Commission (also president of a leading pro-euthanasia campaign group) conceded that Belgium “lacks social studies examining the circumstances of people requesting euthanasia. That makes it difficult to determine how factors such as loneliness, poverty and access to care might influence individual requests.”
In Canada meanwhile, the dust is still settling on the announcement that although euthanasia will not (for now) be extended to those applying solely because of mental illness, the federal government will seek to allow euthanasia by advance request.
Philippe Couillard, who was Premier of Québec when euthanasia was legalised in 2014, said this week that:
‘I’m not sure that I would have again voted for that law with the extension that we have seen in the recent years… I was warned about this by people opposing the law that told me, “We see your motivation is good, but you will see, once you open the door you will not close it and it will open wider.” And this is what happened.’
He’s not the only one having doubts.
‘Two weeks ago, [Dutch] psychiatrist Boudewijn Chabot, a strong supporter of “self-directed death” who was convicted in the 1990s for prescribing lethal medication to a grieving mother, responded with a firm “no” when asked by his profession’s journal if he would still do the same. He calls the Dutch psychiatric “euthanasia trajectory” now a “swamp,” because it is never clear whether those who died through it received adequate mental-health care.’
Image: Mike Cassano/Creative Commons