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Support for 'euthanasia' has nearly doubled since 1981 Increased support for issues like euthanasia and divorce makes the UK one of the most socially liberal countries, according to a new study. Data from the King's College London (KCL) Policy Institute revealed that British attitudes towards suicide have also changed over time.
Attitudes are relatively less liberal on the death penalty, with more people viewing it as justifiable than comparable nations, the findings suggest.
KCL has compiled data from an international survey carried out over the last four decades and found that the proportion of the UK public who believe euthanasia is justifiable has more than doubled between 1981 and 2022.
Support for 'euthanasia' has risen dramatically, from 20% in 1981 to 47% today.
Compared to 24 other countries, Germany, Australia and France were the only countries where a higher proportion of the population believed that euthanasia was justifiable.
Attitudes towards physician-assisted dying in Britain have gradually changed since data was first collected in 1981, but there has been a marked acceleration in acceptance between 2009 and 2022, when the proportion of the British public finding it justifiable rose by about 20%.
Professor Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at King's College London, said: “Support for 'euthanasia' has risen dramatically, from 20% in 1981 to 47% today.
"Assisted dying is, of course, still illegal in the UK, but it is considered much more acceptable to the British public than other illegal behaviors questioned in the study."
This change in attitude is accompanied by an increase in the number of UK members of Dignitas. The Association for Medical Aid in Dying reported that there was an 80 per cent increase in UK membership over the past decade, from 821 in 2012 to 1,528 by the end of 2022.
Suicide was seen as "justifiable", in the words of the survey, by a relatively small minority of the UK population, although that minority nevertheless increased from 6% to 18% between 1981 and 2022.
The UK had the second highest proportion of people who thought suicide was justifiable, just below France at 19%. Other European countries rank much lower on this question, with Italy at 9% and Greece at 2%.
The UK also ranked high in accepting divorce, with 68% of Britons saying it was justifiable.
A breakdown of the UK nations showed that when it came to divorce, Scotland and Wales were the most supportive at 67%, and Northern Ireland the least, with just 48% of respondents saying they the divorce was justifiable.
The only issue on which the UK as a whole held less socially liberal views was the death penalty, with one in five British respondents thinking capital punishment was justifiable.
Several other Western countries, such as Greece, Italy, Germany and Norway, are far less likely to feel this way, with around seven in 10 or more saying the death penalty is not justifiable, according to KCL.
British respondents were twice as likely to say the death penalty is justifiable if they said they would vote Conservative in the next election, with only 16% of Labor voters agreeing it was justifiable.
The issue of the death penalty was recently highlighted by Vice President Lee Anderson, who told Nadine Dorries on TalkTV last month that "millions of conservative voters" are believed to support it.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak noted after Mr. Anderson's comments that neither he nor the government shared that view.
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