Chicago ? A study released Monday sheds new light on euthanasia in the Netherlands, the first country to legalize it for terminally ill people, finding that nearly one in eight adult patients who requested mercy killings decided not to go through with it. Nearly half of the euthanasia requests were carried out.

The study comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of euthanasia – especially in the Netherlands, where officials acknowledged last year that they had carried out mercy killings of terminally ill newborns.

Belgium has since enacted a euthanasia law similar to the Netherlands. In the United States, Oregon is alone in allowing physician-assisted suicide, but its law is expected to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court this fall.

The study, appearing in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine, consists of a survey completed by 3,614 Dutch general practitioners who were asked to describe the most recent request for euthanasia they received during the previous year.