It is weird to me that our society is so fixated on autonomy, self-sufficiency, bootstrapping, competition, and exploitation right up until someone has the desire to exit the whole thing. At that point they get just enough interest from others to keep them alive so they can continue feeding the sick system.
Doctors suffer from ethical qualms if they are forced by law to end the life of a depressed person.
In the EU, yes. People changing their mind (crazy or otherwise) being forced to die by ‘polite’ society.
I mean one can similarly cause them pain by just leaving them. There’s no obligation to stay in relationships with people because the counterfactual would be painful, I don’t see why there should be an obligation to live simply because it would be painful for others.
My parents have both told me they would sooner die than go to a nursing home. Knowing them, I believe both that they mean it and that they would be utterly miserable in a nursing home. Obviously I would be distraught if it came to that, but how selfish would I have to be to tell them "no, you must go to this place that you'll hate because of the impact it will have on me if you die"?
I certainly think there should be controls. A waiting period, mandatory psych checkup to validate rationality and sound mind. If those (quite low) bars are cleared though, I don't see any reason that people shouldn't be able to choose to die.
To your second point, doctors don't necessarily need to be the vendors of legalised euthanasia.
A rheumatologist friend of mine once expressed that he is generally supportive of the idea of voluntary euthanasia, but believes this should involve creating some kind of "assisted dying professional" role. Asking doctors to euthanize people creates (as he put it) a kind of conflict of interest; the person who is there to help you live should not be the same person who can, if you choose, help you die.
Also, going to another city isn't somehow escaping the system we all live in
A plane ticket is probably one of the more expensive parts of relocating. If suicide has already been contemplated, the person also has the ability to let go of the vast majority of their possessions and condense their must-haves down to 1-2 suitcases.
It seems a bit goofy to me that a person with budgetary constraints in need of fresh air is trying to find a solution in the middle of one of the mostly densely populated and polluted cities in Canada.
Manufactured problem?