This article is reprinted from National Review with the permission of the author.

Geriatric suicides used to be considered a tragedy. But these days, increasingly, they are celebrated — whether Compassion and Choices (formerly, the more honestly named Hemlock Society) teaching elderly people to starve themselves to death (VSED), joint lethal jabs of aged married couples in places like the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada, or suicides facilitated at Swiss death clinics.

These clinics are proud of their toll. One Swiss clinic even “prioritizes people who are elderly but not seriously ill,” while others willingly engage in geriatric assisted suicide of depressed elders if they have other conditions. From the odious Exit International’s newsletter:

“Conscious suicides are different from others,” says Jean-Jacques Bise, Co-President of Exit in French-speaking Switzerland.

The figures from RTS suggest that the two types of suicide could be linked.

In very old people, the statistical curves of the two types of suicide cross at the beginning of the 2010s, an indication that from then on there was a shift from unaccompanied to accompanied suicides.

Exit has been offering its members assisted suicide since 1982.

Since 2014, people suffering from multiple illnesses without imminent danger to their lives have also been able to take advantage of this service, provided they are fully capable of judgement.

“We don’t help people who are tired of life,” emphasises Jean-Jacques Bise from Exit.

Is it possible to make use of Exit in cases of depression?

Yes, says Bise, but if a mentally ill person is helped to die, “then because of the illness, not because of the depression”.

Suicide prevention? What’s that?

This is what we are becoming: Pro–some suicides. What a cultural tragedy.