She argues that many people who experience psychological suffering and treatable mental illnesses may be wrongly given the go ahead for euthanasia because "there is absolutely no way for healthcare professionals to measure another person's mental suffering to decide if they should receive euthanasia." Belgium was the second country in the world, after the Netherlands, to decriminalize euthanasia; it was followed by Luxembourg, in 2009, and, this year, by Canada and Colombia. The legislation has provoked a fierce debate over the "right to suicide," because assisted suicide outside of the criteria set for euthanasia is still illegal and is counted as homicide. The law took effect in 1997, and allows for terminally ill, mentally competent patients with less than six months to live to request a prescription for life-ending medication. The law states that Belgian doctors can "help patients" to end their lives if they freely express a wish to die because they are suffering from intractable and unbearable pain. High-profile euthanasia cases have included a 44-year-old transsexual woman whose botched sex-change operation left her with physical deformities that she felt made her look like a "monster"; and 45-year-old identical twins who were deaf and going blind and believed they had nothing left to live for. Laura, who entered a psychiatric facility when she was 21, told the publication: “life, that’s not for me.” 
 
 "Death feels to me not as a choice.
– Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium for more than a decade, and 2013 saw 1,807 euthanasia cases in the country, per the Guardian. Occasionally, individual deaths garner international attention, as in the case of the pair of deaf identical twins who were euthanized in December 2012 after learning they would go blind and not see each other again. Now, another case is grabbing headlines, this time of a woman who has not yet died, but has been granted the right to do so. The Independent has the story of "Laura" by way of the local De Morgen. The 24-year-old does not have a terminal illness; rather, she suffers from depression but, as Newsweek puts it, is "otherwise healthy." She became a patient at a psychiatric facility three years ago after suffering from depression since childhood, she says. "Death feels to me not as a choice. If I had a choice, I would choose a bearable life, but I have done everything and that was unsuccessful," the Independent quotes her as telling the local paper. It hasn't yet been established when she will die. In a piece published last month that has enhanced timeliness now, Rachel Aviv asked in the New Yorker: "When should people with a non-terminal illness be helped to die?" Her article details the case of Godelieva De Troyer, who had suffered from depression since age 19 and, after meeting Wim Distelmans—a professor of palliative medicine who has had a hand in more than 100 deaths by euthanasia—died with his help at age 64 in 2012. Her son has since challenged the laws around euthanasia, laws that Aviv writes "seem to have created a new conception of suicide as a medical treatment, stripped of its tragic dimensions."