Why is Canada euthanising the poor?
spectator.co.uk
spectator.co.uk
This was the argument that moved me from "in favour" to "don't know" on the subject.
Here we see faux concern used to highlight edge cases in euthanasia policy making progressives look bad while glossing over the real Tory concern; suicides paid for by a nanny state for those that should work harder and pay for their own rope.
Now; with this loophole, is euthanasia to be considered legal?
The cost of the drug/machine, which albeit not impossibly high, is still perceived to be a high barrier to entry, in a country where healthcare is a right.
But if the cost issue is solved; would that mean that now the state is "euthanising the poor"?
While it is interesting to think about how intractible problems for the poor can be minor issues to the rich, and how that affects one's decision to be euthanized, ultimately, it isn't the right to choose to die that should be taken away.
There are real cases where euthanasia is a compassionate choice. Outlawing it just forces people to suffer needlessly.
The authors appeal that the government is a uncaring cost optimizer pushing death on the poor misses (or misrepresents) the point. The issue isn't euthanasia, it is that living conditions of the poor are untenable. The solution shouldn't be to force them to live a long life through government enforced misery, should it?
Of course the solution is proper social net.
> Of course the solution is a proper social net
My point exactly. The real issue is not euthanasia, but the author is trying to had to make it seem like it.
As for the abuses, of course they should be addressed, directly. Not indirectly by outlawing euthanasia.
> applied to die
> resorted to euthanasia
The article paints euthanasia as a negative. The implication is that it must be solved. Oh, and it recently became legal. What's the obvious solution?
The author doesn't write the words 'Outlaw Euthanasia', but do they really need to?
For someone making the case for strengthening social support for people who are choosing to die due to poverty, they are focusing on euthanasia a whole lot.
Regardless whether euthanasia itself is negative or neutral or positive.
First of all, we are not talking about just letting people exercise this right by killing themselves, we are talking about suggesting they do and assisting them in the process. It's much less benign.
Second, it's not a matter of having the right or not, it's about defining the worth of a human life. We do not as a matter of policy, condone suicide. On the contrary we are invested in keeping people from committing suicide, with suicide hotlines, suicide prevention efforts, mental health initiatives and so on. So it should be self-evident that the crux of the issue is not self-determination, it's categorizing which people should be helped to die and which should be prevented from dying.
When you frame it like this, it becomes a much harder question, and it raises some grave concerns with regards to the cultural and institutional value frameworks that will go into making these decisions. No one who has seriously thought about euthanasia is surprised by what is going on in Canada, it's something we've been talking about for years.
Right to die != Nudging people to make use of that right.
If people are being coerced into dying, that is already illegal under coercion laws.
If people are opting into dying rather than live under a dystopian torture chamber, perhaps consider letting them out first?
Having the choice of death isn't a real issue here, despite what the article wants you to think.
Yes, euthanasia is a two-fold problem and a strong social net would alleviate some of these issues. But that's insufficient for two reasons. First because some of these issues are cultural, e.g the value (or lack thereof) we put on the lives of the elderly and the disabled in the west, which is not solely driven by economic considerations. Second because euthanasia laws are being implemented right now and the social nets are not there, we are not discussing the theory of euthanasia we are talking about what's happening today and in the following decades for other western nations that will put it into effect. This is why we need to discuss the legal framework and its implementation. Euthanizing the poor is not acceptable, I don't think it needs to be said, and the solution is not to deny the problem and say "this is fine because euthanasia is important".
The recent back-sliding of abortion rights in the U.S. are a fresh reminder of how these tactics can preclude/drive political action, so it's worth recognizing that the tactics are similar.
> euthanasia is a two-fold problem
Widening it to two issues is still an over-simplification, and you're still starting with the assumption that euthanasia is 'a/the problem'.
How is anyone in Canada 'euthanizing the poor'? If people are being forced into choosing to die, that's wrong by itself and systems around the process should be adjusted to ensure that isn't happening, and people doing wrong should be punished. Placing blame on the freedom to choose to live is disingenuous.
I believe the article goes into details about how Canada is euthanizing the poor. You are talking about this from an extremely individualist perspective, individual people forcing other people to die is not the issue we're discussing, we are talking about systemic influences.
Again, euthanasia laws are not about the "freedom to choose to die", it is about defining the boundary between a suicide we seek to prevent and one we seek to assist. Unless you believe all people who wish to die should be assisted.
This misrepresents the original article, which argues that the legalizing euthanasia was predicted to cause people who couldn't afford proper care to kill themselves – be it by coercion or choice – a prediction which seemingly has been proven right here.
There are no pro/con "right to death" arguments being made in the article, only that these consequences are grim and indeed promotes behaviour of an "uncaring cost optimizer pushing death on the poor".
What about the solution where poor people also have a somewhat liveable life with no government enforced misery ?
Should the poor live untenable lives is the fundamental disagreement between you and the author I think.
What's not remotely informative about the following extracts? Or are they untrue? It's an opinion piece but there's not much of that in the following.
"Canadian parliament enacted Bill C-7, a sweeping euthanasia law which repealed the ‘reasonably foreseeable’ requirement – and the requirement that the condition should be ‘terminal’.?
"In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada reversed 22 years of its own jurisprudence by striking down the country’s ban on assisted suicide as unconstitutional"
"The next year, Parliament duly enacted legislation allowing euthanasia, but only for those who suffer from a terminal illness whose natural death was ‘reasonably foreseeable’.
'Not coincidentally, Canada has some of the lowest social care spending of any industrialised country, palliative care is only accessible to a minority, and waiting times in the public healthcare sector can be unbearable, to the point where the same Supreme Court which legalised euthanasia declared those waiting times to be a violation of the right to life back in 2005.'
Please note that I'm not getting into the rights or wrongs of the debate on euthanasia.
From my recent interactions, Canada's health care system seems to be failing for the elderly and young+disabled. Cost of living has skyrocketed in the key populated areas (GTA and GVA) and people have more of a FOMO/me-first attitude in all aspects of life.
The gripe on health care is not just about waiting times. It is administers kicking patients out, threatening with private charges (Ontario Bill C7 that this article references but does not explain to someone unfamiliar), neglect in healthcare and step down facilities.
I am relatively young and can recognize this is not how I want to go. The trend that could emerge is exactly what the article describes .. if life gets too hard, just end it. This is not what Canada used to be.
Govt waste is monumental and services ever dwindling. The key political leaders seem to be espousing positions that pander particular viewpoints but don't actually get things better again. We need a Canadian-version of the Trump slogan - Make Canada Care Again!
>Since then, things have only gotten worse. A woman in Ontario was forced into euthanasia because her housing benefits did not allow her to get better housing which didn’t aggravate her crippling allergies.
They use the word FORCED here.
Actual article:
Woman with chemical sensitivities chose medically-assisted death after failed bid to get better housing
She CHOSE.
Here's the thing. Reading the article.
She's the first person in the world to be diagnosed with a disease, so this is almost certainly completely untrue. She's not a fan of cigarette smoke, who is? She's in government housing and smells cigarette smoke. She really wanted to get away from that cigarette smell.
So the article is written with a rather hyperbole originally and then the spectator comes along and go much further which makes them fake news.
It's sad that some poors have chosen to off themselves for reasons that speakers of RP look down their nose at. I guess we all have a burden to make sure their kind is free from choice. Thank goodness the green and pleasant land has no council flats.
“Gnadentod”, as the page suggests, means “mercy death”. Nothing special. In fact, not unlike “euthanasia”, which is derived from “good death” in ancient Greek.
Its not a word invented by nazies, through they loved abusing it.
It tends to have been used in any use case where a mercy killing would be done. E. g. when killing a animal which is in constant heavy pain, has no chance to recover and will die soon.
Like any case of mercy killing its at least moralicaly questionable especially if the being in question didn't agree to it out of fully fee will (e.g. can't consent) and more then questionable if you force it on anyone. As then it's nothing not then trying to reframe murder.
We should absolutely be looking to fix the underlying issues, but euthanasia isn't working against them, it's another treatment to minimise suffering. When your choices are inappropriate suffering or inappropriate death, why is one better than the other?
That's well before you consider —and I mean really consider, working with— what it is to rot away with a neurodegenerative disease. Giving people an out at an appropriate time by an appropriate mechanism has to be better than losing yourself.
But no, that doesn't sell the Spectator. "SOCIALISM KILLS THE POOR" seems much more their tone.
Everything old is new again
Since when? Abortion of children with Down’s syndrome (up to the point of birth) has been legal in the UK since 1967.
http://enablemagazine.co.uk/interview-downs-syndrome-and-the...
There are plenty of arguments on both sides regarding the UK's stance on aborting foetuses diagnosed with Down's syndrome, but I don't think it would fall under the 'eugenics' umbrella.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227925
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31216770
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31453449
I'm not familiar with The Spectator but other than the title, this article contains the text "A woman in Ontario was forced into euthanasia" linking to an article with the title "Woman with chemical sensitivities chose medically-assisted death".
That seems not only misleading to me, but pure lie.
Did you bother to read the article about the woman, or just the headline? From the linked article:
A 51-year-old Ontario woman with severe sensitivities to chemicals chose medically-assisted death after her desperate search for affordable housing free of cigarette smoke and chemical cleaners failed, advocates say. ... “The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless and a pain in the a*," 'Sophia' said in a video filmed on Feb. 14, eight days before her death, and shared with CTV News by one of her friends. She died after a frantic effort by friends, supporters and even her doctors to get her safe and affordable housing in Toronto. She also left behind letters showing a desperate two-year search for help, in which she begs local, provincial and federal officials for assistance in finding a home away from the smoke and chemicals wafting through her apartment.
The government of Canada generally doesn't provide housing with such specific requirements, and very few governments around the world do.
In her situation, almost anywhere in the world she would have had the choice between living on the street and living in a house that sometimes smells of cigarette from the neighbours. In some countries including Canada, Switzerland or Belgium, she also had the choice of euthanasia.
> In one email to friends, Sophia suggested that her death was, in a way, a show of protest against the lack of response to her and her physicians’ pleas
Doing something in a show of protest against the government is certainly not the same as being forced to do it by this very government.
“We physicians find it UNCONSCIONABLE that no other solution is proposed to this situation other than medical assistance in dying,” they wrote.
It's an important topic, and the reactions here seem to be slow (HN much rather rages about the potential abuses stable diffusion might lead to or how Google is using it's monopoly to try to get a little more pocket money than about problems that are already here, today, and are raising huge social questions).
[0]In case I'm using terminology that is different in other countries: In British newspapers there are two types of article, normal journalism with verified information and 'opinion pieces' where a writer, typically a journalist or politician is invited to give their opinion on current events.
example of Guardian opinion piece: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/22/keir-s...
example of Guardian factual article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/22/my-heart-sank-...
example of Telegraph opinion piece: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/21/six-wasted-years...
example of Telegraph factual article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/22/liz-truss-la...
Is it inflammatory and pointed? A bit, yes. But that's okay, and that's a very different thing than "pure lie".
My feelings override everything in this article.
My feelings.
Could you imagine being in this position? Could you?
It's all about the goal here - peace and no pain.
Nope, not about the system. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.
/s