There is no "we". There are people and their bodies and their wishes. And authoritarians who want a say on it. Doesn't matter if nice sounding words like law and democracy are used to describe the tyranny.
Reality is much messier than "There are people and their bodies and their wishes."
There are whole categories of people who we consider not well enough to make good choices about their bodies and lives, for a variety of reasons
Children are not emotionally mature or responsible enough to make such choices
Mentally ill people are sometimes in an altered state of mind where they are not making good decisions that are consistent with their regular state of mind
Some people are very suggestible and will more or less agree with anything that someone else is telling them to do, even if it is not in their best interest. People who have just received bad news (like a scary medical diagnosis) can easily fall into this, and just agree with whatever someone tells them
It's all well and good to want to respect people's wishes for their lives, but society does have some responsibility to ensure they aren't being pressured by outside forces into acting against their will or against their own interests
Mental health is one I can relate to. There were times when my loved ones struggling with mental health would absolutely go through with assistance euthanasia if they had it available. Years later they are living a much better life but at that point in time, euthanasia would’ve ended it.
I think bodily autonomy is necessary but not everyone is able to make the right decisions at all times. Legislation needs to account for that.
The fun part of the mentally-ill categorization is that being mentally ill also has a tendency to lead to poverty and homelessness which in turn will increase the likelihood that someone will opt for MAID but could be solved by other social means.
I mean, it's plainly evident that mental illness is associated with poverty, which is itself associated with homelessness. Here (https://care.org.uk/news/2024/10/poor-lonely-and-homeless-op...) is an article that references a report that says that people are opting for MAID for non-terminal illnesses and that those who do so are disproportionately likely to be from poorer areas. It also mentions at least one person who specifically mentioned lack of access to housing when opting for MAID. Granted, CARE is blatantly against MAID but the cherries they're picking are in the tree to be picked.
It is pro-social if you can separate objectively. And even then, who is that “social” to decide it? Some people aren’t social.
If the separation line gets drawn across questionable cases, then it’s authoritarian for them. As usual, any scalable implementation will look like a very jagged asterisk-shaped circle and some financial or political interest around it, acting far away from the real needs of people. And those who pick edge cases on its less certain side will push the whole setup further until it stops making sense. Systems like this are inherently vague, which is prone to “oh, we had another case, must regulate more”.
I’ll rephrase myself from the previous thread about suicides: the “society” keeps a blind eye on the fact that it is it who drives people to end their life and then puts a big “dying is prohibited and offensive” sign at the end of this road. If “society” wants to keep “healthy but confused” (subjectively to it) people from leaving, it should look to the root of the problem, not put a barrier at the end.
Ofc teens should be kept away from this for obvious biological reasons.
> Ofc teens should be kept away from this for obvious biological reasons.
Why of course? Is the reason this is obvious to you unique to teenagers? When they turn 18 (or 20) do the reasons to restrict their freedoms immediately go away? Is there no possibility the 'obvious' reason in your mind couldn't occur for a different person in a different age bracket?
Yes, they go away. 18 is a safe age of autonomy, not median. Normal procedures still apply, e.g. are you being coerced, does society physically demand too much from you (e.g. in a form of debt, pain, lack of sleep), etc. If they pass, they are free to die.
To reiterate, fix the problem, not the gate. All statements above are only valid as a whole.
I share your view, but it gets crazy complicated when you're dealing with homicide (I'm using this word to mean it's literal definition: 'death caused by another person', not to mean a crime occurred necessarily).
Euthanasia is controversial for a lot of reasons. Some people worry that authoritarians will use it as a way to "purge" or, such as here in Canada, as a way to "reneg" on health care obligations that tax payers are paying for. Others worry that family members and care providers will abuse the law for financial gain ("legal murder" for inheritance etc.).
It's complicated because we're not talking about an elderly person with terminal cancer. We're talking about a 27 year-old high functioning adult who sought, and was granted, medical assistance in dying due to a mental illness. When you dive into that story, even if you agree that the courts made the right decision and that the 27 year-old had the right to decide her own fate, your heart can't not break thinking about the father.
Morally, I agree that every [adult] individual has the right to commit suicide by any means of their choosing (as long as they're not infringing upon the rights of others in the process). That doesn't mean that there aren't valid reasons for people to debate whether or not ehutanasia should be legal and under what circumstances.
To your point about "Some people worry that authoritarians will use it as a way to "purge" or, such as here in Canada, as a way to "reneg" on health care obligations that tax payers are paying for."
In another thread the Canadian poster talked about someone who decided to go through with ending their life and one of the things they mentioned was "They had to drive 100km to the nearest dialysis clinic."
We have euthanasia in the Netherlands for decades now and there haven't been any controversies as far as I know. It's a solved problem and the discussion here is over. I do agree that the laws and procedures have to be carefully constructed to prevent abuse, but it is possible.
I'm not here to tell you about your country, for which I know very little. But since I'm Canadian and euthanasia here is very new and very controversial, I decided to look up the framework in the Netherlands.
> There is much discussion about people with early dementia who have previously stated in a written will that if they ever got dementia, they would want to get euthanasia.
This doesn't necessarily mean "controversy", but is very much an ongoing discussion and speaks to a problem that euthanasia introduces that has yet to be solved in the Netherlands.
And this really is the issue and complexity when it comes to euthanasia in general: we're talking about a form of legal homicide. So under what circumstances this should be permitted is a very valid legal question. Questions about consent, state of mind, paper trails and proof of consent are also very pressing questions and it sounds like no, not ALL of these questions are currently answered in the Dutch framework.
This is also not me arguing against euthanasia. I believe that adults have the right to commit suicide by any means of their choosing (assuming they're not infringing upon the rights of others in the process). The only thing I'm saying, really, is "it's a complicated issue with lots to consider."
We are at a stage where we are discussing edge cases of euthanasia and it's all related to widening the use; these discussions mostly happen among professionals. There is pretty much no discussion anymore on "vanilla" euthanasia among the general public. I agree it's complicated, but you don't have to solve every edge case with the first iteration.
There are concerns about assisted suicide being pushed on marginalized people who don't have terminal illnesses in Canada. I don't know if that is being driven by "authoritarians" but implying that the issue is just doctors providing death as a service (i.e. to people who are specifically requesting it unprompted) may not be completely accurate.
I'm not worried about anyone "pushing" it. I'm worried about groups being put at the back of the line for other forms of care because the decision makers know that "worst case" more of them will off themselves and find that to be a fine outcome.
That is a danger for sure, but every single path we as a society here take can be exploited by people with ill intentions.
The pharma companies and hospitals have a financial incentive to keep people alive indefinitely, even despite horrible suffering.
The folks paying for the treatment (government, insurance, etc) have a financial incentive to terminate lives prematurely.
Family members with ill intentions may have various nefarious reasons to push for either outcome.
So the question with which we should begin is, "what is the right thing?" and build safeguards around that.
We cannot let "fear of corrupting influences" be the primary guiding principle here because every possible choice as a society here because there's a pretty strong financial incentive to corrupt these choices in either direction.
The concept of "natural death" is self-evidently ridiculous. We treat disease with the best technology possible, but then death has to be "natural."
That notion is at best a distasteful joke before we even get to the ambiguity of what a "natural death" even is, and at worst an evil attempt to define one particular sort of arbitrarily Church-sanctioned death.
What even is "natural death?" Being eaten by a bear? Starving to death because there was a drought and there were no berries for you and your hunter-gatherer buddies to eat? Dying from untreated cancer?
According to Catholic doctrine (to choose an extreme example) we have to keep permanently vegetative people alive indefinitely via feeding tubes and whatever other modern medical technology is required for as long as it takes. What single aspect of that could be described by a sane mind as "natural?"
Because outside of the less than a dozen cases that were roundly criticized across the board, and resulted in no deaths, I can't find any evidence that this is happening or will happen in Canada.
"tyranny" also seems like a concept mostly unrelated to the topic at hand. Practically speaking, nobody can really prevent you from taking your own life.
Someone unable to move is unable to take their own life without assistance. A surprisingly large percentage of people go through some horrific experiences before their bodies completely fail.
Actively preventing someone from providing assistance is. There’s a big difference between not doing something yourself and actively preventing someone else from providing assistance.
> Actively preventing someone from providing assistance is.
Sure, but this happens with legalization, too. Only licensed physicians can assist in suicide. Other attempts to assist will result in state violence. Most people trying to provide assistance won't be licensed physicians.
Which is a completely different effort than the one intended to execute those undesirable to the market. God forbid we support people with anything other than a suicide implement.
Providing assistance isn’t limited to handing someone pills, making the appropriate calls is assistance and a tough moral choice for many. Also, as a purely practical matter physicians can provide both humane options and a clearer separation between direct assistance and murder.
Though obviously there’s other possibilities, it’s a tricker issue than it might at first appear.
Someone who is unable to move is probably also unable to unambiguously communicate their wish to be euthanized as well so I really don't think it's that relevant
Yep that's one side of the argument and it's valid and I sympathize with it.
The other side is when you're hearing stories of people being told that, in lieu of the procedure they're about to undergo, they can surely sign up to receive state-approved death.
"Are you sure you don't want to just die? This is gonna hurt a lot!"
Elderly cancer patients who have a recurrence of cancer often know exactly how uncomfortable another round of chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery will be. At the same time they may already be suffering neurological pain, pleural effusion (fluids building up in the chest), etc.
In this context the statement might be:
"This treatment, as you know, is going to be very unpleasant, has little hope of curing you, and you could live your life while the cancer progresses. We could slow it down and let you decide how you want to live your life."
