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As Canada moves toward legalizing assisted suicide, our special series looks at the places it is already happening.

Tom Mortier never paid much attention to the discussion about euthanasia in his country. “I was like just about anyone else here in Belgium: I didn’t care at all,” he said in a recent interview. “If people want to die, it’s probably their choice. It didn’t concern me.”

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Then in April 2012, Mr. Mortier, a university lecturer, got a message at work. His 64-year-old mother, in the throes of severe depression, had been euthanized the previous day. He would need to make arrangements at the morgue. His mother, Godelieva De Troyer, had largely broken off contact with her family but informed him by email three months earlier that she was looking into euthanasia. He never dreamed her request would be granted because she was in perfect physical health.

His mother’s death has transformed Mr. Mortier, 37, from a typically indifferent Belgian into a raging critic of the country’s euthanasia law, which came into force in 2002. “This is suicide with the approval of society,” he said of her death. “This has nothing to do with euthanasia.”