I wish my mother had been given the option in her early 50s, the number of people punished by authoritarian governments that deny self determinism and force people to be put through experiences literally worse than torture is mind boggling, I cannot fathom it.
I don't think anyone who has seen it even a single time can honestly make slippery slope arguments, I have to assume it's ignorance and that these people are simply "actually" nerds doing recreational theory crafting. I assume it's the same headspace as flat earthers, it doesn't effect me so why should I care about aligning my thoughts with the real world, let me invent theoretical overlords and victims and argue about this new synthetic world that exists in my imagination.
I just can't be uncharitable enough to believe a person who has seen it first hand, that a person would embrace such unfettered cruelty as to deny a person living in constant hell a drop of water.
That being said... fuck, back in 2000 I did meet a bunch of people that denied hiv existed and said even if it did it was a punishment on gay people and it would be better if it wasn't cured so they would be scared and "behave" (yes, I personally met these people, the non-existence was rare but the "shouldn't develop treatment" was not a minority view in the city I lived in at the time.)
After my mother died, for a while I volunteered with "No one dies alone.", I doubt a single person who has done so for any length of time is going to argue "slippery slope".
People get sent to jail for assisting someone, even if it's just to buy some stuff.
That's government overreach.
I have seen it first hand. Suicide is not a drop of water, it's a loaded .45.
That said there's a qualitative moral difference between easing someone's pain in a way that may hasten death and killing them to ease their pain. Almost no one who argues against MAID is arguing for "all medical interventions, forever".
Unfortunately there are situations where things are a bit different from that. For example, where a parent is (very) abusive. :(
I was trying to allude to the saying "you can never have enough time with the ones you love" which I took as a pivot away from solely parents (ones that are loved) but maybe I was too implicit and that isn't a widly known saying and it seems that by trying to allude to it, I left my intended meaning unclear. Sorry about that.
My fear is that I will be 70-80-90, I won't be able to serve myself even for the very basics, I will have lost my memory, and will be a total burden (all the pain - zero joy) to my close family. Why would I do this to them? Perhaps he had a motivation like this - to make sure he won't hurt your lives, your relationships, etc.
Either way, it is a very difficult choice..
We need some kind of "smart contract" for such cases. Maybe an IFTTT or Zapier workflow that automatically activates the MAID clause if predefined conditions (that you chose while you are still conscious) are met.
Like... If your illness makes you suicidal... Is offering assisted suicide REALLY the best we can do? That starts to feel a lot like "eghh you're too hard for society to care about... We'll just let you die".
As horrible as this might sound, often it's failed suicide attempts that actually are the catalysts for people being able to get their lives back on track... What happens in a society where the government helps facilitate suicide and there's never any "attempts" anymore... Just successes...
Still, I'll bite - it's a good thing.
Why? Well an official path to suicide, as per the arrangements already in place, comes with layers of professional guidance and counselling.
It's not a dispassionate "wave 'em through" treadmill of corpse creation.
The best thing for young people with suicidal affixations is to talk to them and take their concerns seriously, correctly established this could arguably reduce teen suicides by recognising the problem, giving the at risk a place to go, requiring them to detail why they want to die, etc.
If you want to take a dim view of faceless government motivations then you might ask yourself why such a souless collective would want to deprive itself of a potential taxpayer before they've even really started to chip in.
Um, source?
"An expert committee reviewing euthanasia deaths in Canada’s most populous province has identified several cases in which patients asked [AND WERE APPROVED] to be killed in part for social reasons such as isolation and fears of homelessness, raising concerns over approvals for vulnerable people in the country’s assisted dying system."
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"Another case focused on Ms B, a woman in her 50s suffering from multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome, who had a history of mental illness including suicidality and post-traumatic stress disorder. She was socially isolated and asked to die largely because she could not get proper housing, according to the report."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/17/canada-nonterm...
That's a serious ask, not a snarky response.
The headline is Canadians with nonterminal conditions sought assisted dying for social reasons
and my question is, so what happened? Was she killed by the state or did she get some much needed assistance with housing, etc. (or neither).
I'd argue that her coming forward is a good thing in the big picture as it adds concrete examples and data for making a case for better social policy and outcomes.
Both cases were borderline and raised concerns.
Both cases were reviewed.
It is imposssible to have any such system in the real world that does not have concerning edge cases.
It is a system that many people want for both themselves and for their relatives in cases that are clearcut.
The problematic reality about people with mental issues and disabilities is that they are also autonomous people who have opinions, think for themselves, and sometimes decide that their own circumstances are no longer tenable following years, decades even, of struggling through.
See eg: The Last Leg from the UK.
It's not desirable to have a system that kills people that don't want to die and wouldn't choose death if they had better options.
What are the housing options for people with chronic mental issues (eg: the extreme examples of schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, etc) that have no support and have exhausted friends and relatives?
These are not easy problems.
What is your proposed solution?
Their action in suggesting MAID was not policy, was rapidly caught, and was the subject of a very public inquiry.
Had the suggestion been followed up by the veterens in question there were layers in place, interviews and checks, to make sure that MAID was both desired and appropriate.
No one was killed against their will here.
There's a legitimate debate to be had on the question of whether it was even wrong to alert an injured veteren that MAID was an option given they had the free will and the gumption to reply No way, Feck off, Not interested.
The onus here should be on secondary interviews sorting out whether a person really did have insurmountable chronic pain and problems or whether they were depressed and lacked resources to deal with a situation.
Can you provide details of this?
How does this apply to capital punishment?
> By steering the discussion to that [innocent] minority, which even itself is still debatable, you risk flushing the child with the bath water [and killing the really bad criminals].
When innocent people are killed via capital punishment, they have no choice.
And it's not a "small minority" either. We don't have good numbers, but it's significant enough to be over 22% or roughly 1 in 5. That's not a small minority.
For Florida, since 1973, 30 people awaiting execution have been exonerated so far. The state has executed 106 people.
Out of 136 cases, 30 were shown to be innocent beyond any reasonable doubt. I have no doubt that there might be other innocent people within the 106 that were executed.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/innocence/innocen...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_in_Flo...
As well, mental illness is not just a state of mind. Sure, there are stories where a failed suicide attempt was the catalyst for someone finally being able to reach out for help, there are also the stories where people have been reaching out for help forever, and help's just not coming. Where they can't afford the medication, or no medication seems to work, or they have an addiction problem and there just isn't any way for them to get into a treatment program, etc.
Not to mention the stories where their attempt left them powerfully sick and/or disabled. We're talking near-miss fatalities here -- recovery from those is rarely painless, quick, or complete.
This isn't a case of medical professionals and program officials just not caring. These eligibility criteria are very carefully considered. In fact, they're SO carefully considered that they've delayed eligibility for MAID due solely to mental illness THREE TIMES to ensure proper safeguards are in place. Currently, it's pushed back to 2027, so we're not even talking about anything that is even a present-day concern.
When someone is determined enough to die, they find a way.
I've read about four or five stories in my lifetime about people who assisted in aiding a dear friend. Most of them just stuffed a pillow in their face when they begged to end their very painful existence.
I've witnessesed my brother in law suffer immensly from cancer before he decided to end it all by assisted death. Near the end he was not human anymore for me. Just a body chock full of medicines constantly trying to survive as much as possible. I can't blame the cells trying to win that desperate war, but it was horrifying to watch him transition from a strong happy human to that state.
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-241.ht...
Counselling or aiding suicide
241 (1) Everyone is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years who, whether suicide ensues or not,
(a) counsels a person to die by suicide or abets a person in dying by suicide; or
(b) aids a person to die by suicide.
Also this was in Germany, but still just as illegal.
She was the most amazing and remarkable woman I ever met. There will be an Arte documentary about her early next year (not about this; about her work in Ukraine).
We need a humane way to treat humans.
I would consider two of these absolutely monstrous reasons to assist someone in killing themselves. A broken society opting into killing its citizens because it can’t be arsed with fixing itself is next level evil
I don't think this is necessarily broken by any reasonable standard. If no medication exists, that's not "broken society". Nor is there not being money to give a bespoke treatment to everyone, no matter how expensive it is. If that's broken, no society in history has ever not been broken. Which is just a poor definition.
That said, I don't have any actual insight into the process; I was just extemporizing. So if it sounds fucked up, that's because _I_ fucked up and didn't think long enough about circumstances where someone would be approved for MAID instead of offered other solutions. It's entirely possible and indeed likely that if you can't afford medication or treatment, there's options in place to get that to you instead of approving your MAID appointment.
Please don't judge Canada too harshly just because I misspoke. =)
- Some of those deaths are suicides.
- It is pure fantasy to imagine we can have a society with 0 suicides (when accounting scale, complexity and size).
The choice then becomes: help, or punish.
It is absolutely monstrous to punish, and helping does not mean killing every Tom, Dick and Harry with a case of the Monday blues.
I would also caution with the old adage, don't knock it till you try it. Life in extreme pain is no life at all. Calling on Jesus isn't going to suddenly make excruciating pain more bearable, especially for someone who doesn't believe in Jesus. Maybe toughing it out for a few more weeks or months is worth extra presents in heaven, but unless we have some evidence of that, I think it would be grossly irresponsible, indeed evil, to legislate it. It is, in my opinion the equivalence of torture.
Just don't push it to others under the name of morality out other bullshit.
I would like to be able to die when I want to, in a simple and painless way. Because I will do it anyway jumping under a train or lorry it is just messy for everyone.
Reality doesn't care about how things should be.
Framing it as unchangeable "reality" is intellectually dishonest.
...and what is the implication here? After I broke a bone, I was given a choice between surgery and a cast. I chose surgery - which cant be undone - and I half regretted it when I bumped into things and the titanium bits transferred the force straight the bone, resulting in exquisite pain. Should I have been denied surgery because it can't be undone? I think not, I was given the choice, I hose what I thought was best. Did I make the correct choice? Probably not, but it was my choice to make, and expecting a system with 0% regret rate is impossible.
Not every mental illness makes someone of unsound mind.
I see no difference between a case of someone who does not wish continue because of some incurable mental health issue that makes their life hell, and someone who does not wish to continue due to e.g. terminal cancer.
And this isn’t even something made up for the particular case of assisted suicide. The idea that someone with mental illness cannot make legitimate choice has been around in the legal system for a while, with mental illness leading to reduced sentences, and even being the basis of acquittal in many situations.
There is mental illness and then there is competence, they are related but not the same. Complicating things further in this case would be things like reactive mental states (grieving etc) which might for a time manifest like mental illness but tend to be not diagnosed.
> and a vast majority are thankful of it
A statistic that (assuming it's true) suffers from the obvious self-selection bias of people who chose to jump off a bridge knowing there was a net to catch their fall.
Till his dying breath he kept repeating how thankful he was that he lived in a country that didn't force him to live on when he didn't want to.
He was a clear Track 1 case, and I realize Track 2 cases are more complicated, but just wanted to add my story as reporting on MAID spins out of control in our culture war milieu.