No Stupid Questions

I fully support being able to choose to end your own life with dignity. But in Canada there were reports of people encouraging the homeless and severely ill to do it, simply because it was cheaper and easier for the institutions if these people killed themselves.

Within a capitalist society, where the lives of those who do not produce profit are not valued, it can lead to some sickening discriminatory behavior from profit-driven institutions.

Misuse, or misjudging when to use it.

For the record, I'm all for the right to medically and painlessly end one's own life if they so choose. That said...

It could potentially be abused in situations where someone has power of attorney or some other situation where they can make medical decisions on your behalf. That seems like a pretty easy thing to guard against, though.

“Oh you’re disabled and can’t work”

Let’s make disability benefits super low, so you are unable to survive, thereby you have to “choose” euthanasia.

The sick and elderly may feel pressure to not be a burden to others.

From the perspective of someone who generally would prefer not to exist, because I don't trust my brain to make that decision. How we perceive reality can vary incredibly from it, suicide can seem not only an appropriate response to your situation but the only way to escape it one day, only to have the next day feel nowhere near as bad. In short, requiring other people's input and approval on your decision to die is a good thing. Medical assistance in dying SHOULD be legal and available everywhere, but it's important to make sure it's actually appropriate.

The hospital industrial complex doesn't get to make ass loads of money from keeping people alive just to suffer.

For assisted suicide, I think you just need to make sure it's the only option left to stop or prevent the suffering of a person (like an incurable disease, or debilitating conditions with no cure, etc.). You also need to make sure the choice is made with enlightened consent.

To allow someone to kill someone else is another level of complexity. The processes of gathering consent, and the reasons to proceed are extremely complex to make sure the decision is taken within the bounds of actual consent, especially if the person to be killed is not conscious or in a capacity to understand.

Choosing for yourself if you're of sound mind, I have no problem with.

Others choosing for you is rife with problems. Taking out family because they don't like you, you're too needy for them, to get at your will, etc etc.

Anyone can already euthanize themselves. We're all just a helium or nitrogen tank and trash bags away from our exit stage right.

I personally believe we should have the right to die, moreso as an individual choice than one a relative should make. We as individuals, who did not consent to living in this absolutely broken society, should have every right to just say one day, "Y'know what, I've had enough, I'm done." This comment will likely be controversial, and I am not encouraging anyone to commit suicide, seek help where and how you can, suicide can be a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

A friend of mine told me once she considered those who commit suicide (outside of terminal illness) to be cowards, taking the "easy" way out and leaving their loved ones to suffer. I argued back that how is it unacceptable for loved ones to suffer, but it's perfectly acceptable for the individual to suffer to keep the loved ones comfortable? And that's what mental health (tin foil hat time) is entirely about: not comfort for the individual, but comfort for the society.

It doesn't matter if you are completely disenfranchised with society, struggling to make ends meet, working multiple jobs with no benefits, eating the same meal 2-3 times a day every day to save money, none of that matters because you're not contributing to society/capitalism they way you're supposed to. When the VA was trying to force me onto SSRIs despite my objections due to the side effects they can have, I told them flat out I wasn't taking a pill just so I could be "productive" for a society that will let me die in the streets at the earliest and cheapest convenience. And no "pill" is going to fix how sick and broken we are as a society.

We as a species weren't designed for this kind of society, we're an analog species trying to adapt to a digital world we haven't had time to properly adjust to. We aren't designed to work 40 hours/week, 8 hours/day, 50+ weeks per year. We aren't designed to work ourselves to exhaustion and forego social interactions in the pursuit of more money to try and keep the lights on. And we are watching the largest transfer of wealth to the ultra-wealthy, making the Gilded Age look like child's play.

So I guess, to sum it up: I think everyone should have the right to end their own life, regardless of the reason, but I don't believe anyone should have the right to end someone else's life outside of already-established practices (DNR orders, "pulling the plug" as PoA, etc). We are too broken as a society to trust ourselves to choose when others should die, but we should absolutely be allowing individual's to end their own lives.

As a concept the idea of allowing total autonomy seems sound.

Implementing it as a practice where the government assists could see some perverse incentives to get people to kill themselves. Here's a real example

If the system can safeguard against these, perhaps, but it isn't a one and done safeguard but constant vigilance. Allowing others to put down people raises even more need for scrutiny.

People with depression and other mental illnesses who aren't capable of making that decision will use it. It also makes it a lot easier to argue for cutting mental healthcare and other suicide prevention measures.

Honestly as someone who's struggled with depression for 20 years, and had a couple of attempts, the idea that the government may just decide there's no problem with me yeeting myself is terrifying.

In terms of yourself, it already effectively is legal. When was the last time someone was prosecuted for attempting suicide?

It's legal in some countries, so I don't see much risks. They rotty sure you can look up for data from Switzerland, Belgium and Netherlands

The decision making process could be abused for some cases, such as those that are comatose or elderly and confused. In the case of comatose or unresponsive cases we already have a process of letting them die by cutting off food or assistance with basic functions and then they have to suffer instead of being allowed to die peacefully like we have for pets.

Also there is some concern that normalizing it would increase the frequency with the assumption that doing so would be wrong. These are valid concerns and should be taken into account, but are massively outweighed by the benefits of less suffering.

I actually disagree with the idea that someone has to be massively suffering or in the process of dying to be able to end their life in a painless way. Having an incurable disease shouldn't mean they must live long enough to suffer before being able to make a decision. I mean we can make decisions like Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) where medical staff can let someone die, but they can't make that process quicker when it comes up because of the fear that someone might assist when they should have let the person painfully die slowly in agony instead.

There are valid concerns, but they are massively overblown compared to the amount of suffering that could be avoided if people were able to make decisions about their end of life while they were still of sound mind, like DNR but more like 'help me die painlessly if I'm going to die anyway'. Just make the decisions where the person's preference isn't known a complicated process to avoid those abuses.

Murder becomes too easy

So I want to start with the pretext that I’m a lifelong defender of euthanasia. I’ve watched my mom slowly die of brain cancer as she lost function.

That said, euthanasia is easy to combine with removal of the autonomy of the disabled and can lead to very bad places. Especially since less severely disabled people is a positive incentive for governments.

I fully support the autonomous right of all people to make informed decisions about their own lives and on paper the idea is a no-brainer.

But unless the legislation surrounding it is very, very tight it could easily be misused or abused. We already live in societies where people with disabilities - particularly learning based disabilities - are seen as having less value. I have overheard conversations where people pass comment on people with disabilities such as "Can't be much of a life", "would've been better for them if they'd died at birth" etc etc.

Amongst the first group of people the Nazi's targeted were people with disabilities that they referred to as 'useless eaters' and subhuman.

I'm not suggesting that laws allowing self-euthanasia are akin to fascism so don't Godwin me. All I'm saying is that without very strong legislation and a lot of checks, laws like this can be used to justify a lot of things.

Who is the arbiter of death that decides when it is right on behalf of another?