Having been through my daughter's suicide attempt, I far prefer the option that ends with a live person.
If the bullet travels fast enough into the skull before the brain can register pain then there is no difference in experience from assisted suicide to eating a bullet. The only difference is the risk of a botched suicide but outside of that the two things are one and the same.
I use extreme language here not to offend people but to illustrate that they are logically the same thing. If you think euthanasia is humane then so is putting a bullet in your own head. If you think putting a bullet in your own head is extreme, then so is euthanasia. Think logically.
Also I love this idea of age being a marker for maturity and the ability to make your own decisions. If my daughter turns 18 at 12:00pm sharp then at 11:59am she is not mature enough to kill herself. But then one second later when she turns 18 she is now mature enough to kill herself in the same way trump and Elon musk are mature because they are past 18. Makes sense.
I can assure you when I look at this world. Nobody is mature. The right and most mature action isn’t always apparent and people make mistakes all the time. For something like suicide I am happy that there are people who give a shit to intervene.
I think this view falls short because it seems to count the chances of someone making an uninformed mistake as an acceptable consequence of preserving individual choice. Personally, I can't agree with this view. I often state that my desire is to protect and preserve life when it comes to suicide and am met with backlash over "inserting myself into other people's lives." When the reality is I've been close to several suicides (due to my community role) where the general community consensus was that the person was dealing with a complex mental health issue and the medical system more or less failed them.
I don't propose to win anybody to my side, but I think the whole topic requires a lot of nuance and shouldn't be simplified.
Perhaps you'd argue this too was a case of the medical system failing the person, but I believe that, lacking the knowledge or technology to truly help someone whose illness has progressed so far, we must help as much as we can, even if it means living with the thought of taking someone's life.
Sorry for the stream of consciousness; I don't know how to wrap this up.
[1]: I say as if there are suicides that should happen. ._\
What if the person is suffering from a mental health crisis that modern medicines can treat? I'm not trying to be obtuse, and I understand what you mean by suffering is akin to what you described, but my point is that written in that way, it's not clear. This is precisely why the conversation needs to have nuance, because we all have wildly different experiences with suicide, and we need to fully understand the various factors driving it before we open the gates to assisted suicide.
> Perhaps you'd argue this too was a case of the medical system failing the person
Why would I argue that? I think you misunderstood my argument. In cases where someone is attempting suicide because of a treatable mental health condition (i.e., a chemistry problem in the brain that can be relieved through modern medicine), I think we should be cautious about killing them without at least attempting to treat the underlying issue.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread is that, in many cases, suicide is not an individual act. A father of three with a family dependent on him who decides to commit suicide is very much impacting the lives of his family members. Again, nuance is warranted.
That would entail considering the other differences between a bullet and assisted suicide other than risk of botching or pain experiences, which you are clearly not doing.
Under your world at 18 every teenager can be immediately separated from their parents and taken to a suicide room where they have an option to choose between several different suicides each administrated by a professional who will guarantee a painless death. There's gas chamber, sharp shooter, decapitation and lethal injection. Every person the minute their 18 is offered this and forcefully walled off from their parents so their parents won't influence their individual freedom.
Additionally there should be public suicide rooms where a person can walk in of their own free will and be instantly gassed to death. One on every corner because freedom.
Imagine you had a depressed teenage son/daughter. He's depressed because his girlfriend just broke up with him. In several years he won't be depressed and he'll look back at his depression and see how stupid it was. But at 18 he has freedom, so I encourage him to go get his head blown off by a professional executioner. his parents were able to stop him at 17, but the minute he turns 18 they can't do shit and Now he's dead. Is this right? Is this total worship of individual freedom the correct thing to do?
If you're not thinking rationally, which you CLEARLY aren't then you would be incapable of seeing this nuance because it is the LOGICAL consequence of what you support.
I think you could have a very, very high threshold for administering euthanasia though, which would be a long cry from having public suicide booths ala Futurama.
The point here is to show that there is no difference but emotions are what create the illusion of a difference.
So your saying if my 18 year old daughter wants to kill herself because of say borderline personality disorder which is treatable I cannot intervene if she asks a professional to lethally inject her but I can intervene if she wants to hang herself and the reason is only because she might mess up the hanging?
It’s like hey you’re killing yourself? Let me save you from doing it improperly here’s the number for a guy that can do it professionally.
This is your “logical” argument?
Also method, motivations, acceptance by family members, doctor approval, etc.
> So your saying if my 18 year old daughter wants to kill herself because of say borderline personality disorder which is treatable I cannot intervene if she asks a professional to lethally inject her
You wouldn't need to as no responsible medical professional would authorize euthanasia in that case.
> This is your “logical” argument?
No, it's your misrepresentation of my logical argument, which has consistently been more logical than your emotional argument.
Question, are you Christian? Is that influencing your complete rejection of suicide at all?
Then tell me your criteria here. Doctors aren't trained specifically in euthanasia as these are arbitrary criteria rather then expert opinions. So the criteria must be established. You can't force doctors to make up an expert opinion when one doesn't exist yet. So because you advocate for this then you must tell me what exactly your criteria is? If you don't have one then you don't really have an argument.
>You wouldn't need to as no responsible medical professional would authorize euthanasia in that case.
Again what is the criteria that the medical professional authorizes? He doesn't have anything other then his own personal opinion right now. If you want to codify euthanasia into law then you need to have SOMETHING to codify. What is it? What is the criteria?
>No, it's your misrepresentation of my logical argument, which has consistently been more logical than your emotional argument.
I never misrepresented anything. You never presented an argument. You'll note my responses to you haven't been representing anything. They've been asking questions. Questions you never answered. Now with this post I'm further focusing my questioning to get a detailed answer.
>Question, are you Christian? Is that influencing your complete rejection of suicide at all?
No I'm rational. Actual Scientific data influences my rejection of suicide. On the other hand I don't think any data is involved with your rejection of it. Which is fine, morals are never rational in the first place.
I think it's very reductive and naive to equate the two. To deny a person's ability to end their life with dignity is, in my opinion, very inhumane.
I would absolutely prefer to be sedated and killed medically but of I do not have this option I will jump in front of a train, or build my own azote based contraption.
I want to choose for me, th1t's it. We have the way more difficult and impacting choice of having the ability yo have children, sucide is a personal thing.
> I want to choose for me, th1t's it. We have the way more difficult and impacting choice of having the ability yo have children, suicide is a personal thing.
So what if a child makes this personal choice? Should we stop it? No right? Is the reason because the child is not sane enough or mature enough to make the right decision?
What criteria makes a person sane enough to make that personal choice? Is it an arbitrary age? Say 18?
I do not know where you maybe but my expectation is that everything health is free (except for some minor stuff).
A medicalized euthanasia absolutely is in scope of that.
We collectively decided that 18 is an age when someone is fully responsible for their everyone (which is biologically incorrect). For lack of a better reference, yes 18.
If you're trying to make an argument for "the person involved was not terminally ill", which you obviously don't know, you are pushing aside everybody who has had emotional and mental health issues through their lives, even you.
Depression is, by far, the leading cause behind suicide attempts. More than 90% of people who attempt to do it (or unfortunately succeed) are living with an underlying mental health condition. Choosing to ignore this is outstandingly idiotic.
Having been on the other side, I prefer otherwise. I also strongly reject the idea that my father should have a say in what I do with my body.
Sorry, this is an emotional response, and I hope that it ended well for you and your loved ones. For me it did not.
What you're saying is:
1. You tried to end your life.
2. Because of the intervention of other people, most likely your family, that didn't happen.
3. You wish that didn't happen and instead would prefer to be dead.
Right?
I won’t dwell on it because this is not the place, but I felt compelled to offer my perspective, which is that it is not always better to fail.
You have my sympathy. But mentioning your preference and not your daughter's makes me wonder if they are the same.
Now she’s trying to suicide again.
I wonder, did you consider that when physicians are involved, they don't provide assistance for treatable depression? Or did you assume that physicians would help someone suffering from ephemeral depression commit suicide?
I rate your evidence 0/10: did not enjoy.
So now, what about all the other things that have shown to reduce symptoms of depression?
I'd happily advocate for placebo + therapy. Does that work?
How about exercise, does that work?
Wow, where did you come up with this? It's even in TFA refuting this, but even outside of that, the comment is utter horse shit. Maybe some types of attempts have no visible physical effects, but there are plenty of people with visible scars from their attempts. I would also be willing to guess that 100% have mental long-term effects from any attempt.
The most common method is pills. The most common outcome is complete physical recovery. That was the case with my daughter.
The mental effects are real, but hard to differentiate from the effects of the mental state that drove the suicide attempt.
Note, the success rate varies. Older people succeed at a higher rate. And so do men.
But let's say you look at 2022 data for Fatal/NonFatal Injury Reports.[1]
49,476 suicide deaths with 14.85/100k crude rate and 14.25 age-adjusted rate.
There is no 'suicide attempt' category that I can find for NonFatal. There's a self-harm category.[2]
544,992 self-harm non-fatal injuries with 163.52/100k crude rate and 172.91 age-adjusted rate.
Sure, we could divide those out and reach roughly 1 in 11 to 1 in 12. But if you look at the definition for self-harm intent in the coding manual[3] you'll see that it's not just suicide -- it's all forms of self-harm including mutilation.
So it's probably not an accurate number, even for a naive estimate. I would want a better source (surely someone somewhere has written a paper on this).
[1] https://wisqars.cdc.gov/reports/?o=MORT&y1=2022&y2=2022&t=0&...
[2] https://wisqars.cdc.gov/reports/?o=NFI&y1=2022&y2=2022&d=0&i...
[3] https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/January-2022-CPSC-Only-NT-N...