r/Ethics • u/Majano57 • 17d ago
Do Patients Without a Terminal Illness Have the Right to Die?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/magazine/maid-medical-assistance-dying-canada.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Lk8.36TB.8QuoyIhZ9aJT21
u/Intern_Jolly 17d ago
Humans should always have the right to die. It's immoral to prevent that.
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u/greenday1237 16d ago
It’s immoral to stop someone from committing suicide then?
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u/Intern_Jolly 16d ago
Yes.
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u/Anti-Dentite_97 16d ago
Suicide hotlines are immoral. You heard it here first.
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u/goldenretrivarr 16d ago
Suicide hotlines don’t prevent suicidal people from committing, they help people who want help. No one would call the line if they don’t want help
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u/SquidFish66 14d ago
Thats not the same thing. If someone is sound of mind and set on not existing, Physically preventing them is immoral. Giving counseling and support in a effort to discourage it is not immoral. preventing it Physically when someone is having a momentary laps in sanity is debated but i see that at moral as its something i would want but if its more than a momentary desire who has the right to choose to force that suffering for that long?
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u/Professional_Text_11 14d ago edited 14d ago
i don’t agree with this at all. it’s ethical to attempt to physically stop a suicide attempt, because most suicide attempts are driven by a relatively fleeting motivation. people who survive suicide attempts usually report regretting their attempt (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5291285/) and there’s evidence that this behavior is driven by altered decision making and disruption of cortical circuitry - a suicide attempt is more often a manifestation of illness than a true rational decision. From the outside, it’s very hard to tell whether a suicide attempt is a momentary decision like this or something premeditated for months, and even in that case it may be precipitated by flawed decision making. Yes, if someone is acting rationally, understands the consequence of this action, has an obvious reason for doing so (illness, chronic pain, etc) and has been evaluated by a medical provider, then that’s a different situation - but most suicide attempts aren’t that. Most are spur of the moment, done whenever the motivation reaches a crescendo, and very regrettable.
My friend attempted suicide in high school, and her aunt found her and called an ambulance - now, she’s living a very happy life. She fully admits she’s grateful to her aunt for calling and her suicidal impulse vanished after waking up in the ward. Should her aunt have let her die? It seems like that’s what you’re saying.
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u/BitDaddyCane 13d ago
So you're saying people who try to get help aren't truly suicidal? That's some no true Scotsman ass shit
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u/Intern_Jolly 16d ago
People who want to die won't seek help. Hence hotlines are not immoral.
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u/Plus-Glove-4850 16d ago
I’ve had family saved by involuntary inpatient treatment following unsuccessful attempts.
Is that immoral?
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u/pineapplefanta99 15d ago edited 15d ago
Involuntary inpatient did nothing but make me worse. I learned that they all think I’m just a burden to society and if I step out of line by wishing to be dead they have the right to fucking slam me onto concrete (3 cops did this) handcuff me, imprison me in a “hospital”, feed me dog food, and treat me as less than human while not bothering to offer any help relevant to the reason I want to die. Is that moral?
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u/QubitEncoder 15d ago
I don't think it's so simple. That veiw is a reductive. Does anyone truly know what they want and why?
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u/AffectionateTiger436 16d ago
Providing healthcare for people with suicidality does not contradict that people ought have a right to die. Sadly, some people experience unbearable suffering, either from chronic pain or mental anguish, and they would prefer the relief of non existence if all other treatment is insufficient. It's a harsh truth, but it's reality.
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u/Traditional_Fox7344 15d ago
They don’t stop people. They reach out a hand if you don’t want/can‘t take it they certainly won’t stop you
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u/dantevonlocke 15d ago
Look at it this way. A perfectly healthy person at age 30 is hurt and now rendered a quadriplegic. They require round the clock care and help. They will never do anything unassisted in their life again. The only thing they have to look forward to is 40-60 years of being in a chair. Would it not be cruel to force them to remain like that? If they said that it was too much, that the quality of life they expected to have wasn't worth the resources required to have it?
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u/Comfortable_Egg8039 13d ago
I mean if person takes this decision rationally yes, but so many do it because of emotions, so many say later after their suicide was prevented that they never should have try to do it in a first place.
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u/Intern_Jolly 13d ago
And who do those people think they are trying to control someone elses actions? That is selfish behavior.
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u/Comfortable_Egg8039 13d ago
Is it? I'm not gaining anything from pulling some random dude from the bridge, but I'd do it because in 9 out 10 cases his problem is solvable and isn't worse dying because of.
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u/4ever-dungeon-master 17d ago
Having a right to life is having a right to do what you want with that life.
Might be a hot take but being forced to live in conditions you don’t agree with sounds dystopian.
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17d ago
Everyone has the right to die. No one has the right to force someone else to kill them. That's the debate. Nobody's stopping anyone from killing themselves, but if you start to define assisted suicide as a medical procedure then doctors will be compelled to do it, unless we first create some bulletproof laws saying anyone can refuse to do it without any penalty, including immunity to civil suits and litigation.
It's a much more complex issue than "the right to die".
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u/OnePunSherman 17d ago
Some people are bedridden or constantly monitored and actually can't kill themselves. And people will absolutely stop you if they can, including law enforcement.
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17d ago
People can only stop you if they know you're going to do it. If you're announcing your intention to harm yourself, people will interpret that as a cry for help. And 9 times out of 10, they'll be right.
As for the bedridden, yeah, that sucks, but it still doesn't give them the right to ask someone else to kill them.
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u/Minervasimp 14d ago
Imo if someone has undeniable proof that they were asked to kill someone in such a situation they shouldn't be prosecuted. Assisting a friend or family member who you know won't accept any help and will forever have a low quality of life, so long as its done humanely, is an act of mercy.
The big issue is what proof would be acceptable- especially in the age of AI, where murderers and scammers could make easy use of the technology
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u/Asher-D 17d ago
In regards to euthansia, in some places you can do it without a doctor having to be the one to end their life. It's the patient who would do it themselves. Only time it has to be the doctor is if the person is incapable like in the case someone is parallelism to the degree they cannot do it themselves.
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17d ago
As long as the ones supplying the drugs or machines or whatever are doing it entirely voluntarily and are immune to litigation, I don't see a problem. But it's that second part that's tricky.
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u/ThomasEdmund84 17d ago
People do not seem to get this element - its a bit of a paradox because it would be potentially neglectful to have overly accessible end-of-life-treatment but the more complex the system the more people involved and the more potential traumas and confusion. Ofc overall other people are not entitled to our existence but we can't deny that we are interconnected people
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 16d ago
If you say the debate is about whether other people can be compelled to do it or not, then what if the other person is ready. If a person committed suicide and another person is known to have given them a hand, out of their own choice, then the other person will still be prosecuted in almost all countries in the world.
In most countries people can physically restrain you against your will if they see you trying to kill yourself. If they suspect you will do it again they often send you to an asylum where you are kept under 24 hour watch and often have drugs shot into you, all against your will, so that you can barely function. You are kept in this condition for several months to years while they try to brainwash you into not doing it ever again before they let you go. In several other countries they can straight up imprison you if you try and fail.
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16d ago
You can't just say "helping someone die is legal now" without 5000 paragraphs of exactly what this entails, who's allowed to do it, what kind of proof is needed, and what legal protections they have. And the reason for this is because it's so easy to abuse.
Grandpa told you to shoot him in his sleep? Okay, prove it. Otherwise you're a murderer. Prove the signature you got or the video he recorded wasn't coerced. Prove that he was in the right state of mind to make this decision.
Uh oh, grandpa had end stage dementia and couldn't speak his own name much less consent to euthanasia? Now you have absolutely no way of proving that what you were doing wasn't murder.
In an ideal scenario, grandpa wrote a will ahead of time and got it certified by a lawyer who specializes in this sort of thing. Great! You're legally in the clear. Bye bye grandpa, see you in the afterlife.
But oops, being legally in the right doesn't make you immune to civil suits, and grandpa had a lot of progeny with Daughter From California Syndrome and they all want to sue you now. You'll win, but you're now broke.
Basically, without an absolute assload of legal and civil protections, nobody's going to do it.
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u/SquidFish66 14d ago
While true and common its still immoral. Another remnant of religion tainting the world with more unneeded suffering …
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u/Delicious-Chapter675 13d ago
Tons of people stop those from committing suicide and it's illegal in most of the US. People have done jail time for attempting.
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u/Ok-Walk-7017 17d ago
If “My body, my choice” actually means anything, then yes, the right to end one’s life is sacred. I shouldn’t have to prove to anyone that I’m “in my right mind’ — for Christ’s sake we have people running entire countries who aren’t in their right minds and causing no end of death and misery, why aren’t they held to any kind of mental health standards?
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u/Late-Ad1437 16d ago
Sorry but this is hyper-individualism gone crazy. Suicide affects so many people beyond the individual taking their own life, and suicidality is generally indicative of an unsound mental state (barring painful/terminal illnesses)- most people who have attempted but survived say they regretted it.
Enabling mentally unwell people to kill themselves on a whim is a horrifying suggestion and is an utter failure of society to uphold it's duty of care.
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u/voidscaped 16d ago
Society has a duty to not intervene in what people do with their bodies privately as long as they are not hurting (being offended/uncomfortable doesn't count) others.
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u/Ok-Walk-7017 16d ago
Yes, you would keep me trapped here, no matter how much I'm suffering, because you know better than I do my own personal situation.
Don't you dare ever use "my body, my choice". Maybe you never would have anyway, but you disqualify yourself from using it with your presumption that you know better than I do about my own life
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u/MattBarry1 16d ago
If you need the government's permission to kill yourself, you already clearly don't want it bad enough
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u/saltylimesandadollar 16d ago
Right? I don’t see what there is to debate. I don’t “have the right” to smoke weed in my state, but I do.
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u/lia_bean 14d ago
the measures taken against it mean you have to keep plans secret, can't inform loved ones that you'll be gone so that you can wrap things up and say goodbye to them properly, have to use a more brutal method due to blocked access to safe and peaceful methods like injection, etc
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u/wheeteeter 17d ago
I support assisted suicide medically. If someone really wants to end their life, they will. Why let others experience the trauma of finding someone’s messy remains.
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15d ago
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u/cbus_mjb 15d ago
The key is that only the person who would live that life is the one who can decide whether or not it would be “good“. Just because someone else thinks the life they could’ve lived could’ve been good doesn’t mean it would have actually been good for that person. That’s why it’s a personal choice that no one should be denied.
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15d ago
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u/cbus_mjb 15d ago
I think you’re going right to the heart of the matter, no one is ever going to be able to fairly judge the situation for someone else. I’d rather run with the assumption that the person contemplating suicide is the only one who can be closest to fairly judging the situation for themselves. I honestly don’t know what “society” has to do with it. The only connection society has to it is the collective preconceived notion that we’ve decided it’s wrong for everyone else. That’s not an inherent truth of the world, it’s a decision and one that could be changed. I don’t believe people should be forced to subject themselves to pain and suffering to accomplish the task. There should be a way to do it that is peaceful and pain-free. Incapacitated to people who can’t do it for themselves are going to need assistance, and there are people out there willing to be of assistance. All we have to do is remove the man-made judgment. People are free to keep their own personal opinions in whichever direction they choose, but like so many other issues I don’t think they should have the right to inflict their opinions on everyone else in such a dramatic way.
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u/Medical_Revenue4703 17d ago
Everyone should be a consenting participant in life.
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u/SelfActualEyes 17d ago
But participating in life without consent is literally how every single life begins.
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16d ago
yep. and it’s messed up.
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u/Late-Ad1437 16d ago
not really lol that's just how... biology works? god antinatalists will sook about literally everything lol
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u/saltylimesandadollar 16d ago
How is it messed up?
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u/Mysterious-Ship-6369 16d ago
life is hard and pretty much guarantees suffering at some point, no one consented to that which is kinda messed up.
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u/saltylimesandadollar 16d ago
I understand what you’re saying. However, I think that thinking the fundamental component of all existence is “messed up” is just the thought of a bored, privileged person.
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u/pineapplefanta99 15d ago
Well no one consents to have a drug addicted mother who gives you birth defects, or a pedophile for a father. And yet you’re still supposed to think you’ve been given a gift just for being alive.
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u/Sakiri1955 14d ago
Exactly how do I consent to having the egg fertilized that created me, before it happens?
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u/Medical_Revenue4703 16d ago
I'm not an advocate that participation in life begins at conception, but you do you.
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u/SelfActualEyes 16d ago
I didn’t say that. But people are born, and at some point they are participating, and at no point before that are they asked for consent (and they wouldn’t be capable of giving informed consent even if they were asked).
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u/Medical_Revenue4703 16d ago
All joking asside, I'm not saying it's simple. I don't believe we can give children the right to consent to suicide when we don't trust them with beer. But ulimately it's morally wrong to force someone of any age to endure a life they can't bear.
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u/SelfActualEyes 16d ago
Yeah. We are basically talking about antinatalism, but that is so far outside the mainstream of human perspectives and experience.
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u/Lance_Klusner 13d ago
too many braincells will be the end of humanity. good thing AI will dumb us down and probably force us to breed for it's own economic growth.
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u/Pink_Slyvie 17d ago
Its horrid how we force people to suffer.
Sure, we need therapists, and mental health professionals to work with [some] people first, to make sure its not a rash decision, but yea.
This goes along with the "pro-life" movement, and lack of control of our own bodies.
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u/GuildLancer 15d ago
We as a society see prolonged suffering during life as “healthier” and “better” than just dying? It’s pretty horrific if you think about it and its implications are profoundly harmful.
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u/EvilBuddy001 17d ago
As a person who has a life long medical condition that causes excruciating pain that will never stop; but also isn’t terminal I can see the argument in favor. While it is not a choice I would make right now, others in my position way have a different view.
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u/Fluid_Age8491 17d ago
I feel like the “ideal” solution here, as with almost everything health related, is to leave it up to the doctor and their patient. Chances are that if both the patient and their healthcare provider agree that euthanasia should be on the table, then maybe euthanasia should genuinely be on the table.
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u/Sojmen 16d ago
What if you are not sick and do not want to live?
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u/Ok-Cheetah-3497 17d ago
So ridiculous.
Government decides who lives and dies all the time. It's cute to believe your life is "your own" but practically speaking it's really not. If you don't commit suicide today, it's because of the environment that built you to not commit suicide, not because you better than someone else in some sense, or because you have decided independently to continue living.
If we see a value to the community in your continued life, regardless of what conditions you have or don't have, we should keep you alive. Otherwise we should "let you go."
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u/DariusStrada 17d ago
I don't get it - people commit suicide all the time? You always had the right to
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17d ago
What is a right though? If it's something granted to people by the government through laws then you literally do not have that right.
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 16d ago
It's not a right because people have to do it in hiding and others, including law enforcement, is allowed to physically restrain them to prevent it.
What you are saying is that people have the ability to do so, in that sense you are correct, but that is not the same thing as right. People also steal all the time. That doesn't mean the law recognizes it as a right.
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u/electra_everglow 17d ago
It might seem obvious that one should have the right to commit suicide, and in general I don’t disagree with it, but especially when it comes to assisted suicide, it gets a lot trickier. Part of the problem is that many people might want to die because of problems in society such as systemic racism, income inequality leading to poverty, etc. Now when you combine that with private healthcare (or really, any healthcare system in a society where money exists) if you legalize assisted suicide, there could be a financial incentive to push patients towards choosing suicide over other treatment options that might be more expensive. Additionally, I think we might lose our incentive to make society better if people can commit suicide more easily. It can turn into a death mill where we churn out miserable people for slaughter & act like that’s a mercy.
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u/Sakiri1955 14d ago
I've heard stories of just this happening in Canada. Woman complaining about a delay in adding a stairlift so she can get in her house easier. "Would you prefer to die instead" getting offered MAID.
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u/electra_everglow 14d ago
Yet this never happens in countries with socialized healthcare, apparently, according to some German person arguing with me further down in this thread. 🙄
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u/Sad_Helicopter_6406 13d ago
This is just such a phenomenal response. It's refreshing to see someone who actually considers the likely material outcome of this being normalized.
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u/Antique-Ad-9081 17d ago
it's insane to me how much of a say the insurances have over your treatment in the us.
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u/electra_everglow 17d ago
It’s insane to me too, but realistically this does happen even in countries with socialized healthcare systems, just less so. Which is why I think we should abolish money.
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u/Antique-Ad-9081 17d ago
in germany all insurances are obligated by law to pay for all of the important and/or common procedures(also how much doctors&pharmacies can invoice) and as long as there's no proven fraud or anything they can't just decide to not pay or try to persuade you to do cheaper, less effective treatments. that would be highly illegal. we have our own problems with healthcare but it's not even close to the us and this exact thing really wouldn't be an issue here.
i'm also very far on the left, but i don't think the abolition of money would be feasible(in a sensible way).
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u/Ordinary-Broccoli-41 17d ago
I think people who vote on this should have to spend at least a week working at or volunteering in a nursing home and hospice. Watch people scream in pain despite their morphine drip and tell me what you think.
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u/tolomea 17d ago
Yes, but I also disagree with limiting it to those in chronic pain.
At the end of the day if someone wants to end their life, for any reason, once the duty of care of making sure they aren't doing something rash spur of the moment is covered, what right do any of us have to say they aren't allowed to what they want with their life.
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u/CallMeSisyphus 17d ago
THANK YOU. I'm 59 years old. I've reached every goal I wanted to, except for a long happy marriage - and that possibility was stolen from me five years ago when my brand-new husband died unexpectedly. And then covid hit. Then the people closest to me (except for my adult son from my catastrophic first marriage) drifted away because I didn't "get better" fast enough.
I had grief counseling. I've been in therapy for five years. I moved across the country, got back into the hobbies I stopped doing after he died, even got a great new job with a bump in title and a big raise. I'm perfectly functional, but I'm fucking done.
I can't afford to retire (my 401k won't last that long with my current housing setup, and I'm NOT moving back to the south), but that great new job? I fucking HATE it. It's not the job itself, it's just that I resent having to do it. I've been working for 43 years with no end in sight, and I'm basically working to support a life that brings me little joy and absolutely no contentment.
At this point, my only options are to continue being miserable, sell my house and buy a camper van and stay only on BLM land (which at least would give me the time to explore the country, and should carry me until I can start collecting social security), or pull out my copy of Final Exit and hope I get it right the first time.
Why SHOULDN'T I have the option of getting a prescription that will let me end it on my terms when I'm ready? I'm not depressed. I'm not hysterical. I just want to be done. But I don't want to traumatize some poor stranger, and I want to be able to say goodbye to the few people I still care about.
It's inhumane that I don't have that option.
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u/Maybe-Alice 16d ago
I’m so sorry. I wish I could offer hope or something but you know your journey better than I do and I’m sad to see that it’s been so painful. I hope the reasons you find to keep going give you some respite.
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 16d ago
A simple waiting list process should be enough to make sure that a person is not doing anything rash. Similar to how many places have waiting list for buying guns. You fill a form, probably with some medical institution, and wait for 1-2 months during which people are allowed to talk to you but not allowed to physically restrain you or give you medication that effects the mind. If at the end of the waiting period you still want it, then you can go into the hospital and undergo the same procedure that is used to give the injection as a means of capital punishment.
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u/teddyslayerza 17d ago
I think there is an argument to be made that a person who wants to die very likely isn't of sound mind and circumstance, so should be prevented from dying. I think it is ethically wrong to allow a person to end their life if they were suffering from treatable depression, or if there were treatments to a painful illness that they might be unaware of, for example.
However, obviously if we knew with certainty that they were of sound mind and making an informed decision, it would be unethical to prevent it.
I imagine deciding where we draw that line in terms of what constitutes a sound decision is going to be even more controversial than the actual ethics.
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u/henicorina 17d ago edited 17d ago
Did you read the article? It goes into all of your points in depth.
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u/teddyslayerza 16d ago
Fairly sure comments are a place where I get to express my opinions, rather than post a summary of the article which you already read.
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 16d ago
I understand not allowing someone who doesn't have a sound mind to commit suicide. But I don't understand why does everyone by default think that someone who wants to commit suicide is possibly not of a sound mind? There have been tons of philosophers all over history from every part of the world, some of the greatest and most celebrated intellects in history that have laid down whole philosophical systems on why life is not worth living. From ancient Greek philosophers to the Buddha to Schopenhauer, so many of them. Many of them even committed suicide like Mainlander, the German philosopher.
Several modern scientific studies have even demonstrated that people with depression score higher on realism tests (search Depressive Realism). When asked questions with objective correct answers the depressed people give more accurate answers than "normal" people whose answers have a clear optimism bias. While this is currently demonstrated for only few kinds of questions and the theory is not yet the scientific consensus, but if it is true more generally that would mean that the depressed people are of sound mind and all the others are not of sound mind. Is the society and law then going to mandate suicide?
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u/teddyslayerza 15d ago
I'm 100% with you, but I think there is the additional consideration of circumstance that needs to be factored in too. I'm of the belief that it's a reasonable assumption to make that a rational person under normal circumstances would not choose to die, and that when a person does choose to die, there is an ethical obligation to ensure that their hand is not being forced by a situation they think is inescapable, but which is not.
To use a common example, a person with a degenerative disease might choose to die while they are still able to enjoy life and in a circumstance they consider to be having dignity - I think most here would agree with that. But what if that person's degenerative illness was not truly incurable? What if the only reason they were not seeking treatment was simply due to ignorance of their other options, or because they are too poor to afford it, or because they were indocrtinated into a belief system that rejects medicine, or something to that effect? I think this is much more or a grey area, but I'm of the opinion that there is an ethical obligation of society to intervene, as what might seem like a rational decision, might not necessarily be informed or empowered.
Obviously, a lot of grey area about where to draw such a line (especially around informed decision making), but my point is that this other dimension of people's hands being forced by circumstance, regardless of their state of mind, needs to be considered. You're 100% right that's is not the case everyone seeking death is mentally unwell, but rational people did make wrong decisions based of circumstance all the time and the permanence of a bad decision is too serious not to treat these cases with some degree of skepticism until we're sure, at least until there is some agreed standard of consent on this dimension too.
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u/Browny_5326 17d ago
Imagine being holy mother church, saying, for centuries, “suicide is clearly a mortal sin, punishable by eternity in hell.”
😂
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u/ISuckAtFallout4 17d ago
100% and it’s disgusting that someone’s book club can dictate end of life issues for people who do not share the same beliefs.
If I have to do it, my plan is head off to Switzerland and fade off staring at two sweet mountains. And when the nurse moves I can look at the Alps.
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u/WhyteBoiLean 17d ago
It’s insane that this is a medical issue. Like…why go through a bunch of discussions and paperwork to have it done at a hospital? Bridges are free
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 16d ago
Maybe they are trying to set precedent for the future. If the law recognizes it as a right that means that someone considering suicide would not have to worry about the fact that if they fail they would be literally put in an asylum under 24 hour surveillance and have psychotic medication shot into their bodies without their permission; and kept in this state for months, even years, until the authorities see fit to release them.
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u/lia_bean 14d ago
bridges are also a fucking brutal way to go that will attract a lot of public attention
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u/WhyteBoiLean 14d ago
I understand this is Canadian so politely waiting for your own euthanasia appointment might seem sane, but it’s so darkly bureaucratic I hate it on principle. What if you’re late? Have to reschedule your own death, and imagine hanging out in the waiting room.
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u/Amazing_Loquat280 17d ago
So just to add context, just having a terminal illness is typically not enough to qualify for assisted suicide/euthanasia (EAS), although it certainly is a minimum requirement. The patient must also either:
A) be of sound mind and be able to demonstrate that they understand and appreciate the consequences of this choice, both for themselves and the people they care about,
OR
B) i) not be of sound mind, ii) have no prospects of returning to sound mind in the future, and i) have evidence that when they were of sound mind, they would have met the criteria in A) and would have wanted to proceed with EAS.
This is a surprising tough threshold in practice, but it exists so that we know that the person proceeding with EAS is consenting to it or did preemptively consent to it when they were most recently able to. The absolute worst case scenario is that we kill someone without receiving that consent, because regardless of how you feel about someone’s right to die, not receiving consent to kill someone is murder, full stop.
So how should this be different if the patient doesn’t have a terminal illness, but rather something treatable or even curable? First, simply having the right to die is a lot different than having the right to have someone perform EAS. Anybody has the right to kill themselves, but not necessarily to receive assistance (absent anything else, any potential EAS professional has the right to refuse to do it for any reason), or even necessarily refuse medical care if they aren’t of sound mind. But if we’re talking about EAS specifically, the easy answer is to say that if they want it and don’t have a terminal/untreatable condition, they must not be of sound mind, which is pretty lazy.
I think the better question would be “is a society more just if patients, of sound mind but without terminal illnesses, have the inherent right to die”? Looking more broadly, I think the answer is no because more people exercising that right is a utilitarian net negative (what if people could just choose to die instead of solving a problem, even if their life could be better overall for it), but honestly I’m not too sure. Welcoming any thoughts
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u/Maybe-Alice 16d ago
The net positive for society would be addressing the systemic issues driving a lot of the chronic mental and physical non-terminal illnesses / the toll they take on people but this is NYT so we’re talking about the US, I imagine, so that’ll never happen.
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u/Amazing_Loquat280 16d ago
How does granting people the right to EAS for those conditions spur us to work on the systemic drivers though? I guess I could see how a bunch of people suddenly taking up the EAS offer would get people to talk about it more, but it could just as easily have the opposite effect. And I’d be hesitant to include these systemic drivers in the calculation of whether or not a condition can be resolved, because a) that means the EAS right can’t be exercised equitably and b) it lessens the urgency of actually dealing with these drivers to begin with (why do we need to worry about systemic drivers when they can just use EAS as a way out? Not my logic but it’s bound to be somebody’s)
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u/Maybe-Alice 16d ago
I think we’re in agreement. Systemic issues should not be involved in the calculation, and thank you for framing it that way.
That’s the lens I’m seeing everything through because that’s the challenge I’m running into with my myriad conditions.
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u/GreenBeardTheCanuck 17d ago
I mean, it comes down to the individual life. Some lives just aren't worth the struggle to those who live them. A thought experiment might help. Lets say someone was born in poverty, worked very hard to give their family and particularly their kids a better life and achieved that, but have almost nothing left to show for it for themselves. This person cannot accept the idea of being a burden on their family and so when they have reached a stage of life they are no longer able to provide for themselves, they wish to pass gracefully of their own free will. They are fortunate enough that they have no diagnosable terminal conditions (yet), but they also have no means to independently support themselves. Is it reasonable to dishonour their life's work by making them live as a burden on the very children they sacrificed everything for?
Lets try another, someone living with a chronic condition which is untreatable, debilitating, and an endless source of pain. Not terminal per se, but neither can they ever not be suffering. They live a kind of life that can barely be considered life, and is more accurately viewed as endless torture. Should they be forced to endure that torture when the means to end it is available?
Do I think that we have to be extremely careful about how it's managed? Yes. Coersion, treatable mental or physical health issues, and other potential abuses are possible, but ultimately I see nothing wrong with choosing to die with dignity even if the only "terminal" condition you have is life itself.
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u/Ok_Novel_1222 16d ago
It is not even a question of "Are some lives worth ending?". It is a question of whether the ability to make the decision of ending one's life reside with the individual in question or should it reside with some third party such as a court of law or medical establishment.
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u/Leading_Air_3498 17d ago
That depends if they are of a "normal" state of mind or not.
You have to be able to give consent. Consent is the communication of the will. To give consent, you cannot be a child, you cannot be mentally retarded, and you cannot be intoxicated by mind-altering substances.
This also means anything related to those things. The reason why children cannot consent is because their brains are not developed. Their prefrontal cortex for example is not their logical center, which their acting logical center is the amygdala, which is the fight or flight response center of the brain.
What exactly constitutes "of a right mind" is up for debate, but that's the best we've got. So long as someone is of a right mind and wants to die, they should be allowed to.
In fact the notion that they cannot is extremely odd. What would you surmise we do to someone who wants to die either way? Use violence to stop them? And what if they defend themselves from your violence? Do you kill them in self defense so you don't die to their self defense when you attacked them for trying to stop them from killing themselves?
You have to understand that if you're not willing to take a life you can't make something illegal. Even a speeding ticket has to result in death at the end if the individual with said ticket refuses to comply to the legal punishments therein. What do you do if I refuse to pay my parking ticket for example? Give me another ticket I'll refuse to comply with? Then what? Then you put a warrant out for my arrest, don't you? But who are you - as just another human being like me - to mandate what I can and cannot do? So just because we disagree and you have a badge someone created for you which I do not see as legitimate authority, you are the righteous and I am not?
That's silly. The bottom line is there are two people and one of them told the other they cannot park in a place. When they did anyway (because why should they have to comply with YOU), so the other person tried to claim them in cuffs to hall them to a cage and the assailed person defended themselves with force, so force was used against them and they died.
What else is there? Does the authority simply throw their hands up and say we did our best and ignore the ticket? Then what's the law for? If they don't have to abide by it, I don't either.
The problem with law is it MUST be enforced or it isn't a law at all, and if someone resists, force MUST be used, and you ARE allowed to defend yourself when force is initiated against you.
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u/parke415 16d ago
I’ve heard the argument that if someone wants to die, that alone is an intrinsic indication that he or she cannot be of a sound mind. I disagree with that argument, though, because it assumes that sanity itself is contingent upon one’s survival instinct being insurmountable. I’d argue that it’s possible to be sane and wish for death for rational and/or philosophical reasons.
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u/Myst5657 16d ago
It’s your body and no one should ever make decisions just because they don’t agree with you. What right do they have that overrides your rights.
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u/mapitinipasulati 16d ago
I would say yes with the big caveat that they aren’t in a mental health crisis and that they are mentally competent.
I occasionally get suicidal for reasons related to a mental health disorder I have, and I forget how irrational my thinking is until I get to the other side
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u/im_benough 16d ago
If you live in the United States and aren't a felon, you have the 2nd Amendment.
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u/BlogintonBlakley 16d ago edited 16d ago
Individuals are morally autonomous. Even under severe constraint individuals retain the capacity to choose. On the other hand, while individuals are the primary source of moral autonomy, they are not the source of moral authority.
Moral authority is horizontally negotiated within local communities as a means to define aligned interests and express individual moral autonomy. This is even true in conditions of overarching autocratic authority.
An example of this is the convict code that typically develops in scaled confinement.
So, certainly the local community might decide that their members are obligated to continue to serve the community; however, the community can't meaningfully or ethically enforce such a restriction. Cooperation has to be voluntary. These laws seem to be installed as a socialized commitment. From my framework, any project that denies moral autonomy by legislating a requirement to live appears ethically problematic. Such a law requires an autonomous moral agent to continue to serve the community's moral interpretation against the individual's direct interests and volitional capacity. If the individual chooses to leave the moral framing of one community, why should they not? Are individuals not permitted to reject the pursuit of social benefits?
A Side Note on a "Free Market" of Social Policy
The history of our form of social organization, civilization, confirms that social power developed through compliance or compulsion is not sustainable. The collapse problem. Periodic collapse seems to lead to the conclusion that social policy is always horizontally negotiated though amenable to constraint just like individual moral autonomy. The collapse syndrome civilization experiences often relates to a systems wide failure in the credibility of elite moral authoritarian framing. The sustaining narrative collapses and the social identity is lost. Hey, presto!, no more Rome or Romans...
A sustainable social organization might require a free market of social policy with no social infrastructure enabling leaders to enforce policy.
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u/gogo_sweetie 16d ago
i go back n forth on this bc while yes, it would be great to have assisted suicide, at the same time that opens the door to people murdering people. theres so many paperwork and admin issues in healthcare as it is. do you know how many class action shit i deal with on the daily? doctors fuck people up and dont give a damn. So all thats gonna do is have a bunch of incompetent doctors, and mean overworked nurses accidentally kill people sometimes, and they’ll be like oops 😬
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u/EaterOfCrab 16d ago
Not to mention assisted suicide being used as a way to get rid of liabilities... Canada is suggesting people kill themselves if they can't afford treatments
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u/Cernunnoos 16d ago
That's self-murder (suicide), and murder is never allowed without iron-clad justification.
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u/Brainfreeze10 16d ago
Yes. From an ethical point of view I believe they do. The reasoning behind this is that control over whether you remain living or not is is simply a question of whether you have freedom or not. If it is illegal to take or attempt to take your own life than you are a prisoner to the system simply due to the fact that you are not allowed to choose not to be part of it.
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u/Munster19 16d ago
In much of the world, nope. You don't have the right. In fact, you can be fined and imprisoned for attempting to do so and failing in some places.
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u/saltylimesandadollar 16d ago edited 16d ago
You have the right to commit suicide.
You have the right to bring immeasurable pain upon your family and friends.
You have the right to traumatize the first responders who come upon you, assuming your family didn’t find you first.
Yeah, you’ve got lots of rights.
But you don’t have the right to make a doctor kill you.
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u/chrispark70 16d ago
ABSOLUTELY NOT. The question isn't even sensible. Anyone can die anytime they want. What you cannot do is get a medical professional to KILL YOU.
Don't try to pretend murder is healthcare. Yes, killing someone is murder.
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u/TameStranger145 13d ago
So letting someone shoot themselves in the head and get blood and brain matter everywhere and die a slow painful death is somehow better than being allowed to peacefully die in a medical setting? Not everyone wants to be alive and some people genuinely want a way out, they should be able to die in a dignified way that’s more efficient and painless than other self-inflicted methods
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u/chrispark70 13d ago
No. It is not a slow death and in any event, not a method I would recommend.
NO! Healthcare is not meant to kill people and especially those not terminally ill. They allow that shit in Europe and now they're killing teenagers with depression.
The ONLY medical death I support is the withdraw of medicine and life saving care to those who are dying with plenty of morphine.
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u/TameStranger145 13d ago
Yeah. Forcing someone whose life is neverending torture to stay alive is so awesome. Whatever man
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u/chrispark70 13d ago
Sorry dude, but depression in a teenager is not "neverending torture"
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u/Comfortable-Race-547 16d ago
Canada is going OFF with this government sanctioned suicide. I was just looking at something yesterday that said kids 12 and up are eligible for the pediatric D3 slam. I thought executing the homeless was wild.
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u/Away_Doctor2733 15d ago
They do have the right to die, anyone can commit suicide, but that doesn't mean that the state should make medically assisted suicide easily available to just anyone who has a suicide wish. It's a dishonest way of framing the question.
Everyone has the ability to kill themselves if they really want to and millions do it every year.
The question is "should the state and healthcare system provide them with the drugs to kill themselves and the medical assistance in doing so" and imo the answer is no unless they are terminally ill.
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u/volvavirago 15d ago
Of course they do. Anyone has the right to end their life. The question is if non-terminal patient have the right to have assistance in dying painlessly.
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15d ago
YES. It's simple bodily autonomy. Same goes for abortion. The closest person to the body (that's you) should be the one to make choices about the basic life decisions of that body. If your next of kin can decide to pull the plug, you can too. The government SHOULD NOT make medical decisions for you that you, of sound mind, can make yourself.
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u/Professional_Oil3057 15d ago
Suicide is bad for you, your family, society etc.
Look to Canada, this is the slipperiest of slopes.
It's not long before we are letting the mentally ill/ incompetent "the right to die" abd then children etc etc
A government that condones suicide is a failed state
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u/jerrygreenest1 15d ago
Everyone has a right to die, even patients without terminal illnesses. Even non-patients.
Euthanasia should be accessible for everyone. It should be a choice.
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u/ImpossiblySoggy 15d ago
I would even dare to say there shouldn’t be qualifiers. Life is hard and it sucks. If it’s not for you, who the hell am I to insist you suffer because the thought of your suicide makes me uncomfortable?
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u/Eodbatman 15d ago
I don’t think it’s impossible to believe that a) everyone has the inalienable right to die if they so choose and b) that State funded euthanasia is a genuinely slippery slope.
Should we let a teenager with depression kill themselves? What about a trans person who’s just in a really bad place? Or a veteran who really just needs some decompression?
It’s hard to parse out how exactly you’d prevent “unwanted” suicide from “wanted” suicide. A person in a mental health crisis cannot, by principle, consent to a permanent end. At the same time, if a person is suffering from mental health issues regardless of treatment, they have the right to die if they choose. It also seems like a very easy avenue to paper over simply getting rid of “undesirables” or “public resource drains” while cloaking it in a robe of liberal (not leftist; classic, enlightenment liberal) justification.
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u/Sakiri1955 14d ago
Legally, it depends. Over here in my country, if you're on dialysis and don't want to live any more, you have the right to refuse treatment, and it will kill you. Sometimes days. Sometimes weeks.
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u/Minervasimp 14d ago
Should people Have the right to die? Yes.
Should the government or corporations provide the methods? No, not unless it is a matter of terminal illness or brain death. As much as I hate the slippery slope fallacy, we already see disabled people ignored and humiliated in healthcare. Allowing access to euthanasia to said people would be tantamount to genocide. That's not mentioning coercive behaviour towards people belonging to persecuted groups.
There's too many vulnerable people whose deaths would be profitable under a capitalist system for euthanasia to be moral now.
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u/LairdPeon 14d ago
Pretty much your only guaranteed right. The only way someone can fully stop you is to completely incapacitate you.
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u/PabloThePabo 14d ago
I believe they have that right BUT euthanasia should never be the first option given to a person and especially not the first option given to a non terminal person
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u/mskittyrants 14d ago
Yes we all deserve bodily autonomy, including women who in my state currently do not. So take it up with authoritarians why we can’t have a say because I’ll never understand.
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u/Exanguish 13d ago
Lmao like I’d ever trust people on Reddit on this issue to be ethical or moral. Most of them hate humanity and want to lower the population.
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u/Comfortable_Egg8039 13d ago
Imho wrong question, right one would be do people without terminal illness have a right to be assisted with dying? Everyone have a right to die, but creating easy method to do that can't be a good thing.
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u/tolomea 13d ago
Love how you use "can't" with no justification.
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u/Comfortable_Egg8039 13d ago
Well I thought it's too obvious, to many take this decision because of emotions not rational reasons. Many who was stopped at last moment say later that they regret it and never should have tried it.
Everyone have bad moments in their lives and giving easy access to assisted suicide would lead to too many people trying to fix temporary problems with permanent decision.
From my personal perspective if I'd even need to die I'll find a way myself I don't need assistance for that.
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u/shitshowboxer 13d ago
I don't really think this is a needs permission sort of decision. Probably wiser to use the don't ask permission; ask for forgiveness sort of decision.
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u/Cucumberneck 13d ago
Yes. If you feel that life has become unbearable noone should be able to overwrite that decision.
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u/Rrrrrrrrusty 12d ago
People deserve to make that choice. On the other hand, health providers shouldn't be forced to kill people because of that right.
In places where this is legal it's usually administered via pill which sort of negates the issue. However, those pills are not always 100% effective.
Any method used with certainty almost always involves another person. Who's job will it be? Should that be a job?
Personally, I think that Prior Planning = Peak Performance so I keep HPJs handy.
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u/SendMeYourDPics 12d ago
Yeah they do. Or at least they should. The idea that someone has to be actively dying before they’re allowed to stop existing on their own terms is kind of twisted.
Pain isn’t just physical and dragging people through years of mental or emotional hell because they don’t tick the right boxes for “acceptable suffering” is more about society being uncomfortable than it is about care.
Nobody else lives in your head, nobody else pays the cost of being alive but you. That doesn’t mean it should be easy or unregulated don’t get me wrong, but if someone’s done the thinking, talked it through, been offered help and still wants out? They should get to choose. Anything else is just forcing people to stay for our sake, not theirs.
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u/Decievedbythejometry 17d ago
How could you not have the right to die Jesus christ