I'm a huge proponent for assisted suicide in general, even if you're not terminally ill. Regardless, these types of laws are a step in the right direction.
This line reminded me of a lecture from my Psych 101 class back in college:
There are three "views" of ourselves
1. Reality
2. What we wish we were
3. Where we think we are
If 2 and 3 match but are far from 1: we are happy but "delusional"
If 1 and 3 match but we are far from 2: this is VERY often found in people who have depression.
And, ideally for long term happiness, 1 and 3 are close together and 2 is a "reasonable" distance away or close to 1 and 3.
>Regardless, these types of laws are a step in the right direction.
What direction would that be?
Providing people with options on how/when they leave this world and making suicide less taboo. You could say most technically have this option already but I think it's more humane if we provide reliable methods to do so via medical professionals. Leaving it up to individuals can be messy and violent.
On the cultural side, I guess I'd like to see less sanctioning of suicide so that we don't make people's lives more complicated for merely expressing their desire to do so (e.g. getting the police called and being held for days)
All of that to say that death is sad regardless of what time you leave and I'm not advocating for people to do it. Just that we should have the option like any other healthcare service with guardrails of course.
Because consent matters.
Many things work this way, they're wonderful or useful or helpful when you request/consent to it, but are despicably evil when done against your will.
I’ve had my dark moments, but I learned to deal and I’m sooo glad I didn’t end it.
You know, you always hear about people who survive a suicide attempt often find out after they’ve jumped that they really didn’t want to die! It’s an irreversible choice, and something about realizing that changes people.
You don't just walk into a building and say "I would like to die please" and then get assistance on the spot.
The two people I know who chose assisted death both had to go through various evaluations (over a period of several months) to determine that they thoroughly understood the decision they were making and that they had the mental capacity to make the decision.
The comparison to a child 'consenting' to sex is completely nonsensical.
What they really need is help, not death.
I agree that those (hypothetical) people need help. Though, to be honest, I'm not really convinced this is a real issue. Some of these programs have been around for multiple decades, and I've not seen any evidence that there is a pattern of abuse. Let alone the programs being apparently "ripe for abuse".
Disallowing assisted death programs is not help, though. It is a punishment to people who deserve a death of dignity instead of months or years of unbearable suffering.
If abuse of the medical system is a concern of yours, I feel like a much more prominent cause ( millions more preventable deaths) worth fighting is over-prescription of opiates. That's just my opinion, though. (And, for all I know, you're already fighting that fight too. If so, godspeed)
It's false dignity, and false compassion. Dignity does not come from control over one's life, and it does not come from the absence of suffering. Dignity comes from being made in the image and likeness of God. If anyone reading does not agree, well, that's fine, but I feel compelled to say it that someone might read it.
How many people will we lose to despair that could have been helped? I say this both as a Catholic and someone that has suffered and recovered from mental illness.
However:
>How many people will we lose to despair that could have been helped?
Assisted death is not something reserved for mental illness, and it's dishonest to frame your comment like it is. Terminal, painful diseases are the leading reason for assisted death. In fact, many assisted death programs do not consider mental illness alone to meet the criteria of acceptance.
The whole point of these programs is that there is no other help possible. Except, maybe, enough drugs to make the person basically dead anyways. Which, in my opinion, is not "help".
God allows suffering to bring about a greater good, His plan. He endows us also with free will, which sometimes means we make choices that cause suffering for ourselves or others. Free will doesn't mean all or even most suffering in a given life is because of our choices. Sometimes it is though.
Satan's playbook is all about denying these things, denying the cross, denying redemption. Satan is the one whispering that life isn't worth it, that it would be easier to end it, come down from the cross.
For a even better discussion of these things, I always recommend Life is Worth Living which is an old program hosted by Bishop Fulton Sheen. It is as relevant today as it was when he recorded it. Many of the episodes are on YouTube.
EDIT: many seem to be taking this as an anti-painkiller stance which it is not. Reducing pain until natural death is a great kindness.
If tomorrow I invented a machine that could keep us all alive indefinitely but also required us to be immobile and in great pain, who would choose that outcome?
Nothing in my comments is dependent on assisted suicide being available or not for any purpose or another. I am arguing against it in all cases to be clear.
Yes, reading your other comment, I now understand that you truly believe that suffering is a good thing and that, if you had it your way, my father would have had to be bedridden, in extreme agony, for several more months than he had already suffered. A cruelty beyond imagination.
We will never, ever agree on this, so I wish you a good day.
If your god approves of that, I disapprove of your god.
[1] https://www.camh.ca/en/camh-news-and-stories/maid-and-mental...
You seem to be saying that as this is inconsistent. I'm curious why do you think that is? Whether someone agrees to have something done to them or not is a crucial factor in whether doing said thing is OK.
Assisted suicide, in my view, is more like an escape hatch for people who don't want to participate any longer regardless of how much "potential" they may have. Making it available for terminally ill patients is good, but it misses the mark for people who struggle with more "invisible" illnesses like ones in their own mind or lifelong ones like a physical deformity.
There's also an issue with the death penalty process seemingly requiring suffering, as evidenced by the lack of use of inert gas which appears to be painless considering accidents with poorly-ventilated spaces where people unknowingly pass out (and sadly those who go help them suffer the same fate). Even in states where the "gas chamber" is a thing, cyanide is used instead of just inert gas despite it making the post-execution cleanup process safer (so would make sense even if you did not care one bit about the suffering of the condemned).
(And I'm not in favour of the state killing criminals or terminally ill people).
The situation is completely unlike the death penalty, where it's about punishment.
People in Canada are being offered assisted suicide because the wait for a wheelchair ramp is too long: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/02/canada-par...
There are people who are suicidal who don’t feel they deserve help and feel that assisted suicide is an option for them. We should not give them that option. Instead, we should spend that effort as a society helping them deal / get better.
Also, people who find suicidal often will find a way, legal or illegal. This is about terminally ill people, and about not making things harder for them, or getting their loved ones in legal trouble.
Yes, of course. This is a concept called "consent", and it drastically changes the context and morality of various situations.
* A person believes that choosing to die is different than having that forced upon you
* A person disapproves of assisted suicide and capital punishment?
* A person approves of assisted suicide and capital punishment?
* The process is quite different for criminals vs voluntary medical participants?
etc etc?
Seems to me you're twisting things pretty hard to find a false equivalence.
How the health professional accompanies the subject is a major aspect of medicine. So some uncaring prison personnel carrying out an execution vs a caring health professional, a terrifying process vs acceptance/calm/accompanying is wildly different, re: "the medical process".
A careful surgical procedure on a toenail is wildly different to someone torturing you by taking your toenail.
Over the last six years it has been my responsibility to oversee the end-of-life care for three people: my paternal grandfather and grandmother, and maternal grandmother.
My grandfather died at home of congestive heart failure. He spent a week on hospice in a medical bed in the living room staring at the ceiling, barely conscious due to the morphine and pain, pissing and shitting himself, as he slowly suffocated to death.
My paternal grandmother lingered for two weeks in the hospital due to an embolism after falling and breaking her hip. Again, two weeks bedridden staring at the ceiling barely conscious due to the morphine and pain, with a machine breathing for her, until diffusion/perfusion stopped enough that no mechanical or pharmaceutical intervention could oxygenate her blood enough and she died.
My maternal grandmother was the worst. Having fought off COPD for the last 20 years it finally became too much. After a year of coughing fits that led to torn muscles and spine/rib fractures leading to her being in a near-constant state of opioid-induced stupor the oxygen and albuterol stopped working and she very slowly and painfully drowned to death. She had been aware of her impending death for about two years and constantly expressed her desire to die on her own terms, but she had made the mistake of moving into an assisted living facility. So she spent the last few years of her life in a recliner hooked up to oxygen as the albuterol treatments got more and more frequent until the point that she would have to wake up every couple of hours 24 hours a day to do them, with coughing fits between them to the point that she would paralyze herself due to neck or back pain and spend six weeks on pain killers, unable to urinate or defecate or dress or eat without assistance, as it became harder and harder to breathe until she mercifully slipped into unconsciousness and died.
We already have medical aid in dying, it's called "giving a little more morphine every time the patient starts gurgling in order to 'soothe their pain'".
In a just world the patient has the choice to accelerate the process.
All men must die.
I will not die suffocating to death as I stare at a blank ceiling, blasted out of my brains on drugs, while a TV blares in the background to cover up the sobs of my family.
In my late sixties I am going to start going to the doctor complaining of back pain, stockpile enough Percocet to kill me, and when the time comes (with good fortune many many decades later) I am going to settle my accounts, write a note with some directions, have a party, and say goodbye.
That's why I'm "for" MAID.
Refusing respiratory therapy or medication is not assisted suicide. Nobody has to die in an ICU or hooked up to tubes if that is not their choice and they prepare properly. And as you note, hospice painkillers given to alleviate suffering also not assisted suicide even if it has a double effect in accelerating inevitable death.
If you want to prepare an alternate plan to blast your brain out on drugs to the point of death that's your prerogative. That doesn't mean we should create a system where we doctors are in the business of deliberately killing their patients on demand (or worse, as it leads to, pushing this "service" on their patients).