I was found it odd that I can choose to euthanize my dog but not myself. This is an interesting workaround.
As someone else brought up, there can be disagreements between family and an individual about when the right time for them to die is in both directions. Even in America this can be observed with things like life support for the very elderly, an intervention that is sometimes necessary for continued life but not considered euthanasia to forego. You won't have to dig very deep to find a doctor that has seen families argue about this.
So, if you say "only I can make the decision," then mental illness becomes a lot more deadly than it has to be. If you say, "other people can weigh in," then what do you do when they want you to die more than you do (and start pressuring you, and you're old, and already depressed...)? This leaves us at our current state, which is "nobody gets to make the decision."
If you're equating society with government, you're not correct in every case. Assisted suicide is legal in some jurisdictions. California is mentioned in the article, but another example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada
Again, this can already be seen happening in life-support cases. I won't say "ask any doctor," because I haven't asked every doctor, but it's not too hard to find first-hand accounts.
No one is proposing to legalize impulsive suicide, and it's ridiculous to equate euthanasia with it.
They find even the proper application of euthanasia terribly emotionally draining though. It's being confronted by the feelings of the human family that is the worst for them.
Most notably after a dog has mauled someone.
Having seen some of my grandparents slowly fade with dementia, I'm sad they didn't have the choice to end it on their terms. Whether they would have chosen to do so I don't know.
But the individual freedom to end your own pointless suffering seems very reasonable to me.
I am planning to set one up soon though I will hopefully have a few more decades ahead of me. It will specifically state that in the event I can no longer manage my affairs I wish to be transported to the nearest locale in which I can have my life ended.
Ha ha, "manage my affairs"... maybe give yourself a slightly longer rope :)
My grandmother sure can't do her own taxes, but she has no illness - she's just old, and world has changed around her.
Assuming you have well behaved kids, you'll likely stop managing your affairs long before you loose your health.
And should these frameworks have flaws we can improve them.
I won't outline a proposal here, but it's not rocket science to require a paper signed while of sound mind, and then giving a guardian permission to pull the plug later. It's not rocket science to limit it to people with fatal conditions, etc.
Someone always decides what's right, either yourself or your family or the state (usually via law).
You opt in favour of state and conveniently ignore the will of the people who would choose family or "they themselves" because law is not a person and therefore it can decide.
That's not at all convincing.
Except that is not our current state. Our current state is that a bizarre legal process makes the decision, and that process is different in every state.
Any time you have uncertainty, you necessarily have both type I and type II errors. You can tweak your decision criteria so that you get more of one or more of the other, but you can never eliminate errors entirely. The fundamental problem we have is that we can't agree which is worse: having someone die before their time, or having someone live past it.
One thing that would help is to recognize that our choice of terminology is hurting us: we talk about "saving lives" but in fact there is no such thing as "saving" a life, only extending one. Once you look at it that way you realize almost immediately that if you're going to allocated resources to extending a life, it probably makes more sense to, say, allocate those resources to a 20-year-old rather than a 95-year-old.
Most of the objection to euthanasia is focused on the case where you are administering deadly medications to a person that can survive on their own. Ending life support is another debate, although one that shares many properties and players with euthanasia.
On the other hand, I really don't see the salient difference between euthanizing someone and sedating them until they die of starvation and dehydration. Once you start to intervene with the intent of producing a painless death, why not just get it over with?
If so, why so? Why is that form of induced death better or worse than administering a drug? If not, why not? It's clearly a form of hospital administered life support just like a breathing machine.
I don't have the answer, but it's not a cut and dry question. Like most things around life and conscienceness it's complicated.
You (rightly) worry about a situation where someone is pressured into dying, or chooses to die because their brain is broken. But what about situations where someone is suffering horribly with no relief to come, and they want to end it, and their family agrees, and their doctors, but everyone is prevented from carrying out their wishes because of a blanket ban?
And "workaround" seems a strangely lightweight term to use in this context. It's not an engineering problem you're faced with here. It's an ethical issue.