I was on the fence until a family member was diagnosed with inoperable glioblastoma. I would encourage anyone in opposition, or in doubt, to read about late stages of GBM, and imagine their mother or child going through that end, which is 100% certainly for everyone who got unlucky. There is no cure, and no known cause.
This is not murder, it’s mercy - just imagine being in a soul crushing place of having to end the suffering and life of your parent or child, then being told it’s not possible.
My mother died that way, after a fairly long and cautious consultation process, but through medical assistance. She had a cluster of health problems, and also suffered from mental problems caused by recurring memories caused by dementia. The other prognosis would have been: suffering in a hospice until her body would give up. Now she could die in peace, surrounded by her family. We didn't really know the extent of her suffering, but after the first injection, a strong sedative, she spoke her final words: "I have no pain. I have no pain."
I had a position, then went through a life experience that changed my position.
The alternative is to never change your view, or to early on build a strong view on everything you have zero experience with, such as hospice care or the nuance of every immigration rule.
No, I would say the alternative is to listen to and evaluate arguments and base your views on what you find to be convincing. The problem with the "I don't care until it happens to me" mindset is that they often flatly refuse to consider arguments until those arguments affect them personally; this isn't open-mindedness but rather closed-mindedness paired with a deeply self-centered world view.
Yeah I’m glad they care now to support this but what might help folks more is explaining what reflecting on this has helped with other opinions you may or may not have these days!
I believe ultimately we will head towards a situation where anyone can request it at any time for any reason. Gating with health conditions is just to ease the transition.
That said, the great problem in countries with tax funded social and health services is the government have a distinct interest in persuading certain people to jump, and this is a serious moral hazard as some of the Canadian experience has demonstrated.
Today though the UK has the opposite problem, which is an enormous private residential “care” system keeping huge numbers of unwilling near vegetables wired up until they eventually die, transferring as much of the family money to the “carers” as possible. They have an awful lot to lose from this too, so I expect the fight to be a lot nastier from here on.
> I believe ultimately we will head towards a situation where anyone can request it at any time for any reason.
Not a chance. This will always be gated by medical evaluation for suitability.
Suicidal ideation occurs transiently in many conditions or life circumstances. Giving these people tools to follow through with their impulses "at any time for any reason" would be disastrous.
>Canada is letting people request suicide for non terminal and non physical disabilities (e.g. autism)
That's a distortion of the truth. The case that you're referring to in Calgary is newsworthy because the father of the patient is arguing the woman isn't mentally competent to make the decision, because she is autistic. The judge ruled that being autistic doesn't make one mentally incompetent for the purposes of requesting MAID.
She's requesting MAID for some other unspecified symptoms that the father argues are undiagnosed psychological issues.
That is not the same as requesting MAID because you have autism.
I am 100% against this and I don’t think it should be allowed. You’re young fit and healthy and you want to die?
Find a way to do it. It sucks, and it’s not that I disagree that some people might be better off - it’s that the system that would allow for this would be politically untenable and likely abused.
But it’s also because not allowing people to commit suicide easily can help making the symptoms go away naturally as circumstances change.
> Today though the UK has the opposite problem, which is an enormous private residential “care” system keeping huge numbers of unwilling near vegetables wired up until they eventually die, transferring as much of the family money to the “carers” as possible.
Same as the US.
Nobody below the Fussellian upper-middle class in the US has savings—just accounts that temporarily hold money for the hospitals and elder care & hospice facilities.
Bit of a nitpick but we don't have "an enormous private residential “care” system keeping huge numbers of unwilling near vegetables wired up until they eventually die"
We have enormous private residential “care” system where they sit around in chairs. The "near vegetables wired up" are in NHS hospitals.
I don't think most of the care home folk are going to go for assisted dying. Also it's not as profitable as you might think - real estate is expensive and it's not that easy to get staff to wipe up 24/7.
It is not yet law, and will almost certainly be amended. There were real doubts on it clearing this stage in the process, but now the various stakeholders, such as those benefitting from the status quo, will be pushing on the relevant committees much harder.
>"That said, the great problem in countries with tax funded social and health services is the government have a distinct interest in persuading certain people to jump"
Well, government may have a "distinct interest..." for reasons that are far away from being health related. I think that any hint of encouragement must be severely punished.
I feel like that's hardly a solid rebuttal. The "Handling of specific cases" has 10 cases, a few of which I would struggle to tie to assisted dying.
During the year with the most event (2022), 5 events occured for over 13 000 patients that chose assisted dying. That's 1 for every 2600 person and these events are basically just people suggesting MAiD improperly.
My Mum died slowly from lung cancer over almost three years. It spread to basically every organ in her body, she was taking so much chemo they eventually said they had to stop or the chemo would kill her before the cancer would. The intense pain, humiliation and knowing it was a certain death sentence hung over her every single minute of every single day.
My family would have given anything to have been allowed access to assisted suicide by the end.
And I guarantee you would too.
Anyone that says otherwise simply hasn't lived it.
Yeah dying sucks. Too many people have this delusion that their death will happen peacefully in their sleep. There is no guarantee whatsoever. Good chance it will be awful. If needed, I want to have the option for myself to get over with it swiftly.
I saw both my grandmothers waste away waste away with Alzheimer's, and one of the worst parts was seeing the effect on my grandfather's. One of them spent a decade mostly sitting in a chair next to his wife who no longer spoke or recognized anyone...
By Americans? Why do some Canadians try to sweep under the rug actual debates by dismissing them as being "american arguments"? Surely as a Canadian you have seen that there has been a constant debate about the limits and excesses of MAID? Even the CBC has a few yearly articles about someone getting euthanized because they wanted to die because they were too poor and similar.
I mean, we live in a country where the ruling party has 30% of the vote, and 35% when they had a majority in parliament. So why pretend that disagreements with Canadian policy is somehow just coming from Americans not understanding our wonderful country? It's super weird and it's oddly common on places like here and Reddit.
>Why do some Canadians try to sweep under the rug actual debates by dismissing them as being "american arguments"?
Because we live here, it's not as big a deal as right-wing ideologues would like you to believe, and it's usually American religious conservatives (or Canadian wannabe-Americans) doing the hand-wringing and the clutching at pearls.
>Surely as a Canadian you have seen that there has been a constant debate about the limits and excesses of MAID?
Yes, there has been spirited debate about a major shift in public health policy. Are you suggesting this is somehow bad?
> That prompted MacAulay to order an internal investigation, which has now uncovered a total of four cases where veterans were allegedly offered MAID — all apparently by the same caseworker.
Rogue employees suggesting bad treatment doesn't seem too much a cause for concern so long as they're caught before it goes further.
I am a nurse and work on a unit with quite a lot of the End of life patients. Including patients with MND and COPD which need careful management for breathlessness.
I don't support this legislation. My opposition is based on the fact that enabling someone to have a peaceful death involves a interplay of numerous environmental social and biological factors. The new legislation will need to fit into this complex environment without disrupting the practices which have built up to manage EOL care.
For example suffering for a patient will be significantly eased if the doctor explains clearly what is expected to happen and what the patient is likely to experience.
A patient with COPD, might be afraid to experience breathlessness. But the medical team explain how it will work, the nurses introduce it gradually and the patient does not suffer. Its the interplay of the technology, the professionals, the biological process and, obviously the patient and the beliefs and uncertainty.
Likewise a completely dependent MND patient will requite 16 full time nurses to provide for his needs. They might feel like a burden. Again its an interplay between the patients needs, symptoms and the professionals and technology we use to meet these needs.
If we overlay on this situations the knowledge that the patient could simply take their own life, its not clear to me that this would alleviate suffering.
My grandmother, who I visited today, is a 93yo COPD patient.
She can't breathe. She can't use the bathroom without help. She can't hardly move. She's hooked up to a nasal cannula 100% of the time. Albuterol breathing exercises 4x a day means she can't sleep more than six hours at a time because if she skips one, even on O2, she experiences suffocation.
She coughs so badly that she has constant rib/spine fractures so she's on and off narcotic painkillers that only make life bearable in doses enough to turn her brain into mush.
She wants to die. She's done. She won life. She's the last lady standing. Every single friend from her youth is gone. It's over.
I've already told her that when I get into my 60s I am going to stockpile a cache of painkillers and when the time comes go out on my own terms. There is an exact and precise 0.0% chance that my family is going to cry out in the hallway for days/weeks while I shit/piss myself in bed and slowly drown to death as my organs fail.
But it's too late for my grandmother because she waited until she was under the watchful eye of the skilled nursing facility nightmare.
In my idealized world, there is no violence, no accidents, and all diseases have been cured except for the inevitable and unstoppable phenomenon of heart failure and 100% of ALL deaths are medically-assisted suicide, decided on by the individual once they reach the point where your heart can no longer support independent living but before you get to the Morphine downward spiral.
I am a volunteer FF/EMT so I've seen my fair share of end of life patients in the last 25 years and apparently I am the only responsible adult in my family so I've handled the hospice phase for every member of my family for the last 20 years.
It is incomprehensible to me that anyone who has any exposure to death whatsoever does not fully support a person's right to determine the time and manner of their death-- even if it comes with problems.
The only reasons I can come up with for not supporting it are: a financial stake in prolonged expensive end-of-life care, the belief that the patients are too stupid to determine their fate, and/or trying to impose their personal religious beliefs on the masses.
If I am in horrendous and incurable pain, I hope I have the option to calmly and painlessly end my own life without having to worry about my loved ones going to prison for it.
It requires extreme naivete to believe that this will not rapidly shift from doctor assisted suicide to mandatory removal of medical benefits except "end of life care". The medical-insurance complex in the US cannot wait for this to happen.
It's just another insanity-driving information warfare topic.
Yes, let's imagine all the horrible things that could happen because the government suddenly allowed something that happened anyway - people committed suicide in end of life situations all the time - and let's base it off this one country where the law wasn't written well enough or enforcement is lax or whatever.
Let's use that as an example of why this should be banned always, forever, in all situations, because the X abuse of this in country Y shows it should never be done.
I have family who's dying with dementia. If I ever get into that situation, which I hope I don't, I hope people end it with my permission.
I believe a patient currently & their family members are required to state what kind of care a person should have if things go wrong before a surgery.
Why could the law not just continue this by adding an additional option that states when you would want assisted suicide? I would think lawmakers could specify that insurance or doctors are not allowed to make this decision or let it effect their services.
in single-payer government funded healthcare systems (Canada UK), medically assisted suicide is ENORMOUS cost savings.
imagine paying taxes all your life and hoping to get a good care in later stage of your life, and government just MAIDs you instead of providing care
The current UK/CA social contract seems to be:
you work for 45+ years and pay taxes, but when you get old and sick and need medical care, we will just MAID you and instead give away all your taxes to welfare recipients
In the US there will be share-holder lawsuits against insurance companies that do not enforce this strictly enough. It's just a return to a time when only the wealthy could receive medical care - this time it's just being marketed better.
You seem to be confused about how US medical insurance companies operate. First, the majority of terminal patients are on government Medicare or Medicaid health plans. Second, commercial insurers have their profits capped by a minimum 85% medical loss ratio so they have no direct financial incentive to restrict care or push plan members towards assisted suicide. Rather the opposite.
As if this legislation in the US would not entirely upend the current rules and regulations. That's exactly the issue - you can't say "well currently things are X, and introducing Y won't change anything" when Y does, in fact, change everything. A positive example of this was EMTALA in 1986 when the US gvt told hospitals "if you want to bill Medicare you have to provide ER treatment to everyone." That was a radical change to the way in which medical care had been provided in the US up to that point. Introducing any form of assisted suicide introduces many complex legal issues just around liability from a practice standpoint - to say nothing of the complexities of who determines what even constitutes legal authority for the decision itself.
The government does not have to - like I said this is just a marketing campaign. What is to stop the introduction of "lower cost" insurance tiers if you opt in to a "limited care" plan that would allow you to be terminated instead of treated if the treatment cost is above a threshold value? What happens when people are convinced that seeking care = being selfish, or when the elderly are seen entirely as burdens on society even if they are not sick but using social welfare programs? If you think this is crazy talk I honestly don't believe you are aware of the evils well-intentioned people are capable of committing.
Why do you think they can't do it? The government can always just say, "We aren't treating your diseases anymore. We will put you out of your misery whenever you like however."
Every single constituency supports law change:
Three-quarters of respondents (75%) said that they would support making it lawful for someone to seek assisted dying in the UK, with just 14% against
Support for changing the law consistently high regardless of voters’ political affiliation
Two-thirds (66%) of respondents with faith support law change, including 69% of Christians
Yes most people are against war too yet you don't see people voting their way out of that now do you?
If assisted dying is on the table, it won't be long before prescribed dying is too. I am not as hopeful as you that normal political processes will prevent that, but one can dream.
You don’t seem to have any hope at all. The stuff you’re talking about is wildly dystopian, and hopefully would just be rejected in any meaningful democracy.
You want to know what prescribed dying looks like? Look at any autocracy, see their political prisoners dying in jail or by execution.
If the majority of a population want reasonable MAID rights, then it’s within their democratic right to get it. The rejection of this is autocracy by ignoring the popular will.
I'm saying that there isn't much space between assisted dying and prescribed dying. People will be diagnosed with mental issues and encouraged to kill themselves. If you're a political troublemaker then that will definitely happen.
I might be a pessimist but I don't think I'm wrong. Everything tends to be abused, especially when it involves government. So be careful what you wish for and watch for tyranny at every turn.
Which war are you referring to? Some wars are popular, others not. During the 2020 US presidential election campaign, Joe Biden promised to end the war in Afghanistan and after he took office he did it. In a democracy, voters absolutely do influence these policies.
The war in Afghanistan was already slated to end but Biden screwed up the withdrawal leaving the Taliban with about $80 billion in high-tech weapons. He also got us into something even worse in Ukraine and supports a bunch of war in the Middle East. Is this all his fault? I don't think he is the one making decisions. But he certainly hasn't been an anti-war president. He wasn't suddenly elected because of Afghanistan either after 20 years of our involvement. He was mostly elected because people expected he would end covid lockdowns or somehow end the pandemic, and things only got worse under his leadership.
I watched the debate as it was happening on Sky News and it seemed to be one the most respectful debates in a long time when it comes to a divisive issue (cough cough Brexit).
Out of curiosity why do people need permission or help from their government for this? Is it related to life insurance? Or is it that in some cases people can not get to the hardware store for a mask, hose, some duct tape and a tank of nitrogen? Or is it a business thing meaning someone is trying to corner the market on those crazy expensive suicide pods?
I don't want to die. However, I can imagine many scenarios that are worse than death. In many of them I am too incapacitated to arrange my own painless suicide. Allowing third parties to help in these circumstances, with appropriate controls to ensure this freedom isn't abused, seems to me the least bad option.
> Or is it that in some cases people can not get to the hardware store for a painters face mask, the corresponding hose with the 40mm NATO connector, some duct tape and a tank of nitrogen?
Certainly part of it. Some people by the time they have no other hope are physically incapable of doing that.
Some people would rather not DIY such a consequential thing the same way they rather not brew their own antibiotics or do their own dentistry. Obviously in this case the “worst” which might happen is that they don’t die but suffer even more pain and indignities.
It is also the legal risk for those who remain. Every time someoen DIYs their end as you write it there is a police investigation. (As there should be, to make sure that there were no trickery around the death.) Depending on how things go your loved ones might get arrested and thrown into prison (if the system believes they killed you, or even if something they did or accused of doing is deemed to have “assisted” you). Similarly they might not be able to inherit after you if they were deemed to have assisted in your suicide. And that can be some
small thing, like your partner driving you to the hardware store, or paying for the purchase, or helping you tighten a NATO connector. Now they lost you, they might have lost their home and they might be looking down the barrel of a risky legal case with years of prison as a possibility. That is not something anybody would wish on their loved ones.
All of that makes sense. I guess if I were in that situation I would make a video explaining what I was going to do, then another one showing me setting it all up, send that to my attorney and local law enforcement chief since they are slow to read emails and then park myself outside the mortuary with a letter and copy of the video pinned to my clothes and a final video of me doing the deed to remove any ambiguity. Oh, and a receipt for all the gear.
Hmm. I’m feeling a bit worried about discussing this topic in this much detail. I’m sure it is just pure intelectual curriosity for you but many reads this forum. If someone is thinking about any of this beyond a thought experiment please reach out to someone. I know the going can be incredibly hard sometimes but things can change with time.
I guess what you describe above sounds sensible. There are two practical problems with it.
One is that you are, by all evidence of your comment, an individual with above average inteligence and planning ability. I have a suspicion if we leave you on a deserted island in a few years you might be halfway on your way to your own iron age. Unfortunately not everyone who is smithen by devastating chronic suffering is as lucky as you are in that department. The rules of the society has to work for everyone, not just the smart ones. For each and everyone who thinks through what you did there are hundreds and hundreds who can’t and won’t.
Then the other problem, society wise, is that typically by the point someone reaches the end of the road and their illness is deemed incurrabble they are not well. Long illness weakened them, maybe they are paralysed, or blinded. What you describe is hard, but even harder if one does not have all their physical faculties. And that is very sad, but unfortunately that is the main case legislation like this aims at.
At least that is how I think about when i think about the purposes of such law.
That makes sense. If that is the case it creates yet another question for me. If someone sends for a driver to go shop and pick up the aforementioned items are they culpable?
> If someone sends for a driver to go shop and pick up the aforementioned items are they culpable?
That greatly depends on the jurisdiction. In general though the issue here is that you don't want to die by shooting yourself, but you want to die by taking a pill. And the issue really is that nobody is going to sell this stuff to you unless they know they cannot be charged for it.
Assisted suicide is legal in Austria for a few years and the main thing that it has changed is the availability of humane ways of dying.
I dislike these proposals because they always eventually encourage the erosion of help for people who very much want to live. I don't think the end of life is very dignified, but I don't trust the government to ever decide to spend money helping people in pain reduce their pain, instead of shrugging and saying, "Well, you can choose to die" We're seeing this in Canada and it was utterly predictable
How much money should governments spend to keep a patient alive one more month? If you've actually thought this through then you should be able to reply with a specific number. Resources are limited so anything spent on caring for those patients can't be spent on other priorities. And don't try to weasel out of the question by claiming that we need to raise taxes or cut military spending or whatever; no matter what we do with other budget line items the answer always has to come down to a specific number.
They probably change their mind pretty quick if they witness a loved one go through endless pain for no reason. Some of them, I'd think. Others, I'm sure, would tell them how much wonderful the gates of heaven will look when they get there.
Yes. Every Jew and Christian, until recently, interpreted thou shall not kill (more accurately translated as murder) as a ban on killing yourself or another with the intention of killing yourself.
If every Jew and Christian until like 100 years ago think that was the correct interpretation then that is the canonical interpretation. Calling in a possible reading is just not correct.
It would seem that many exceptions were carved out to allow Christian led crusades, pograms, etc. Jewish military history is extensive and embraced more than simple stern words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_military_history.
I am not sure what your point even is. What is typically referred to as killing (thou shalt not kill) is referring to murder / unjustified killing. This is how Jews and Christians have interpreted it for almost the entirety of their existence. It is only in the more recent years that a small minority have disagreed.
There is no exception because it is not talking about just killings only unjust ones.
Wars, and killings within them, can be just (look up just war theory). The point of a war, at least from a Christian perspective, is not to kill people, but to stop an invasion, protect innocents or the like. If it isn't doing that then the war is not just. If you are wanting to kill, rather than protect innocents or whatever then you are fighting for the wrong reason. This is what is known as the principle of double effect.
The Crusades were intended to stop the Muslim invasion, regain Christian lands, prevent the fall of the Byzantine Empire, allow for safe travel of pilgrims, etc. Those are considered just things to protect. (Obviously not all people in the Crusades had the same motives, but that is on them not the war in general).
Also, just because Christians, Jews, or whoever do something, doesn't mean it is inline with their faith. People justify bad things, ignore teachings, don't actually believe, etc.
To give a more modern example and one relevant to the thread, jumping on a live grenade is not considered suicide because you are not attempting to kill yourself, but to stop others from being blown up. You know you are probably going to die, but since you are not intending to kill yourself it is not an unjust killing. Jesus said "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends".
The point is a simple one, in the space of a few comments you've moved from:
Every Jew and Christian, until recently, interpreted thou shall not kill (more accurately translated as murder) as a ban on killing yourself or another ..
to
(paraphrased) except for when justified.
meaning that there has been considerable latitude in the reading and interpretation of what in modern english is stated as "Thou shalt not kill"
There will be some who interpret:
Jesus said "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends".
as making suicide acceptable so as to not place a burden on friends and family due to { reasons }.
There are many Christians, Jews, and Muslims in this world and many interpretations of the many and varied texts and translations.
I may not have been as clear as I should have been.
I was making a distinction between killing and murder. All murders are killings, not all killings are murders. If you kill somebody it may be acceptable or it may not be. Killing somebody in defense of another is fine so long as you are intending to protect the innocent not to kill. You may end up killing, but it would not be murder and as such would be justifiable.
Bringing up the latitude and interpretation is a major problem some Christians have, but this is a modern problem. The Church, historical, had always believed there needs to be people involved to help guide people. The Bible itself makes the point in Acts 8: "So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him."
You are highlighting a reason why somebody shouldn't just read the Bible and assume they know what it means. This is a problem that only applies to a portion of the Protestant churches not the remaining Protestant churches or the Churches that existed before the reformation (Catholic, Orthodox, etc).
You bringing up English translations is why I was making it clear that murder was a more accurate way of understanding the decree against killing. I knew if I didn't specify that it was only murder, somebody would ask about war. Apparently I wasn't clear enough.
Can you find a single prominent Christian or Jewish scholar, theologian, saint, etc who lived 1000 years ago who believed that Jesus was allowing suicide?
Like I said, this is a modern problem because some Christian churches have gone off the rails and have rejected the traditional views held by the Church. They are clearly wrong. Using them as justification for something is ridiculous. Imagine if somebody said Stalin / Mao / whoever was a communist. Communists are atheists so that means atheists can kill people like those people did. You would argue that those people do not represent an accurate description of atheists. Just as you would reject that argument against atheists, I reject your argument against Jews and Christians.
In Canada they have proposed assisted dying for young people suffering from depression. What better way to harvest organs and save money than by making unproductive young people want to die?
If this was seriously restricted to people facing severe debilitating injuries or pain I might be more in favor. But you know it won't stop there.
It's easier to go down a slope than go up it. It's a tragedy.
Most doctors, all disability organisations and charities, all hospices and elderly care organisations opposed this. A visit to the doctor should never even have the possibility of a conversation such as "have you considered dying? I can help". This was decided by people who are not old, not disabled, not vulnerable.
Additionally, we have a case now where the national health service will in one section prevent ill people considering suicide and help them out of it but will in another section help those who are considering suicide and encourage them into it! It fundamentally changes the nature of what a health service is.
The Samartians number is 116 123
The Samaritan's motto is "every life lost to suicide is a tragedy"
I live in Canada. I know people who chose MAiD (our euthanasia process) way because of certain conditions (e.g. one in 80s, with incurable cancer, constant pain). There is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing someone suffer, endlessly, begging to go, but having no avenue to go peacefully.
I saw my grandmother go through the most intense amount of pains for about a decade in early 2000s (at about ~70) while she lived with us. We did everything we could. Seeing my mom cry endlessly throughout years rewired my brain to the point where I will always support assisted suicide.
I really don't care if it's "immoral", "slippery slope", "against the natural way of life" and so on. If, at any point in the future, my parents are suffering and decide they want to go out with their own way, I want them to have the choice. And I want that choice to be available for me as well, if it ever comes to that.
Samaritans is a registered charity aimed at providing emotional support to anyone in emotional distress, struggling to cope or at risk of suicide throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, often through its telephone helpline.
A couple of articles with more critical views, the first discusses how proponents of the law have been avoiding scrutiny ahead of the bill, and have been talking up safeguards that aren't actually in their proposal:
The second argues that this will disproportionately affect women, who already suffer more under domestic abuse including being killed by partners, predicting that this will be used similarly:
According to this report, the main charity that is pushing this, Death in Dignity, uses case studies from violent men who murdered their wives and has men working for them who have killed women.
I was on the fence until a family member was diagnosed with inoperable glioblastoma. I would encourage anyone in opposition, or in doubt, to read about late stages of GBM, and imagine their mother or child going through that end, which is 100% certainly for everyone who got unlucky. There is no cure, and no known cause.
This is not murder, it’s mercy - just imagine being in a soul crushing place of having to end the suffering and life of your parent or child, then being told it’s not possible.
My mother died that way, after a fairly long and cautious consultation process, but through medical assistance. She had a cluster of health problems, and also suffered from mental problems caused by recurring memories caused by dementia. The other prognosis would have been: suffering in a hospice until her body would give up. Now she could die in peace, surrounded by her family. We didn't really know the extent of her suffering, but after the first injection, a strong sedative, she spoke her final words: "I have no pain. I have no pain."
It's really good that it's possible.
This is called the "I don't care until it happens to me" mindset.
I had a position, then went through a life experience that changed my position.
The alternative is to never change your view, or to early on build a strong view on everything you have zero experience with, such as hospice care or the nuance of every immigration rule.
> The alternative is to never change your view
No, I would say the alternative is to listen to and evaluate arguments and base your views on what you find to be convincing. The problem with the "I don't care until it happens to me" mindset is that they often flatly refuse to consider arguments until those arguments affect them personally; this isn't open-mindedness but rather closed-mindedness paired with a deeply self-centered world view.
Yeah I’m glad they care now to support this but what might help folks more is explaining what reflecting on this has helped with other opinions you may or may not have these days!
I believe ultimately we will head towards a situation where anyone can request it at any time for any reason. Gating with health conditions is just to ease the transition.
That said, the great problem in countries with tax funded social and health services is the government have a distinct interest in persuading certain people to jump, and this is a serious moral hazard as some of the Canadian experience has demonstrated.
Today though the UK has the opposite problem, which is an enormous private residential “care” system keeping huge numbers of unwilling near vegetables wired up until they eventually die, transferring as much of the family money to the “carers” as possible. They have an awful lot to lose from this too, so I expect the fight to be a lot nastier from here on.
> I believe ultimately we will head towards a situation where anyone can request it at any time for any reason.
Not a chance. This will always be gated by medical evaluation for suitability.
Suicidal ideation occurs transiently in many conditions or life circumstances. Giving these people tools to follow through with their impulses "at any time for any reason" would be disastrous.
Canada is letting people request suicide for non terminal and non physical disabilities (e.g. autism)
Whilst I am genuinely supportive of the legislation, I have a disability myself and am cautious about what it might lead to.
>Canada is letting people request suicide for non terminal and non physical disabilities (e.g. autism)
That's a distortion of the truth. The case that you're referring to in Calgary is newsworthy because the father of the patient is arguing the woman isn't mentally competent to make the decision, because she is autistic. The judge ruled that being autistic doesn't make one mentally incompetent for the purposes of requesting MAID.
She's requesting MAID for some other unspecified symptoms that the father argues are undiagnosed psychological issues.
That is not the same as requesting MAID because you have autism.
I am 100% against this and I don’t think it should be allowed. You’re young fit and healthy and you want to die?
Find a way to do it. It sucks, and it’s not that I disagree that some people might be better off - it’s that the system that would allow for this would be politically untenable and likely abused.
But it’s also because not allowing people to commit suicide easily can help making the symptoms go away naturally as circumstances change.
[dead]
> Today though the UK has the opposite problem, which is an enormous private residential “care” system keeping huge numbers of unwilling near vegetables wired up until they eventually die, transferring as much of the family money to the “carers” as possible.
Same as the US.
Nobody below the Fussellian upper-middle class in the US has savings—just accounts that temporarily hold money for the hospitals and elder care & hospice facilities.
Bit of a nitpick but we don't have "an enormous private residential “care” system keeping huge numbers of unwilling near vegetables wired up until they eventually die"
We have enormous private residential “care” system where they sit around in chairs. The "near vegetables wired up" are in NHS hospitals.
I don't think most of the care home folk are going to go for assisted dying. Also it's not as profitable as you might think - real estate is expensive and it's not that easy to get staff to wipe up 24/7.
Nope. If you have the means you will be ejected from the hospital into the private system until you do not.
It’s a potentially lucrative business: https://youtu.be/EbmQxZkSswI?si=G5-eaqTBhKYzns65
Fight? Who is fighting in this instance?
It is not yet law, and will almost certainly be amended. There were real doubts on it clearing this stage in the process, but now the various stakeholders, such as those benefitting from the status quo, will be pushing on the relevant committees much harder.
Ahh ok. Yes, agreed.
>"That said, the great problem in countries with tax funded social and health services is the government have a distinct interest in persuading certain people to jump"
Well, government may have a "distinct interest..." for reasons that are far away from being health related. I think that any hint of encouragement must be severely punished.
> as some of the Canadian experience has demonstrated
I live in Canada, and I keep hearing this kind of stuff brought up by Americans.
What, exactly, is "the Canadian experience"?
It would be best if your sources are not American media outlets intended for American audiences they are looking to manipulate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada
I feel like that's hardly a solid rebuttal. The "Handling of specific cases" has 10 cases, a few of which I would struggle to tie to assisted dying.
During the year with the most event (2022), 5 events occured for over 13 000 patients that chose assisted dying. That's 1 for every 2600 person and these events are basically just people suggesting MAiD improperly.
My Mum died slowly from lung cancer over almost three years. It spread to basically every organ in her body, she was taking so much chemo they eventually said they had to stop or the chemo would kill her before the cancer would. The intense pain, humiliation and knowing it was a certain death sentence hung over her every single minute of every single day.
My family would have given anything to have been allowed access to assisted suicide by the end.
And I guarantee you would too.
Anyone that says otherwise simply hasn't lived it.
Yeah dying sucks. Too many people have this delusion that their death will happen peacefully in their sleep. There is no guarantee whatsoever. Good chance it will be awful. If needed, I want to have the option for myself to get over with it swiftly.
I saw both my grandmothers waste away waste away with Alzheimer's, and one of the worst parts was seeing the effect on my grandfather's. One of them spent a decade mostly sitting in a chair next to his wife who no longer spoke or recognized anyone...
By Americans? Why do some Canadians try to sweep under the rug actual debates by dismissing them as being "american arguments"? Surely as a Canadian you have seen that there has been a constant debate about the limits and excesses of MAID? Even the CBC has a few yearly articles about someone getting euthanized because they wanted to die because they were too poor and similar.
I mean, we live in a country where the ruling party has 30% of the vote, and 35% when they had a majority in parliament. So why pretend that disagreements with Canadian policy is somehow just coming from Americans not understanding our wonderful country? It's super weird and it's oddly common on places like here and Reddit.
>Why do some Canadians try to sweep under the rug actual debates by dismissing them as being "american arguments"?
Because we live here, it's not as big a deal as right-wing ideologues would like you to believe, and it's usually American religious conservatives (or Canadian wannabe-Americans) doing the hand-wringing and the clutching at pearls.
>Surely as a Canadian you have seen that there has been a constant debate about the limits and excesses of MAID?
Yes, there has been spirited debate about a major shift in public health policy. Are you suggesting this is somehow bad?
I am British and Canadian.
Some of the famous incidents: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investig... https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/paralympian-trying-to-get-wh...
The Canadian “care” industry is also a dumpster fire: https://globalnews.ca/news/4870784/gilles-duceppes-mother-fo...
> That prompted MacAulay to order an internal investigation, which has now uncovered a total of four cases where veterans were allegedly offered MAID — all apparently by the same caseworker.
Rogue employees suggesting bad treatment doesn't seem too much a cause for concern so long as they're caught before it goes further.
After all, people like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman exist prior to this ruling.
I am a nurse and work on a unit with quite a lot of the End of life patients. Including patients with MND and COPD which need careful management for breathlessness.
I don't support this legislation. My opposition is based on the fact that enabling someone to have a peaceful death involves a interplay of numerous environmental social and biological factors. The new legislation will need to fit into this complex environment without disrupting the practices which have built up to manage EOL care.
For example suffering for a patient will be significantly eased if the doctor explains clearly what is expected to happen and what the patient is likely to experience.
A patient with COPD, might be afraid to experience breathlessness. But the medical team explain how it will work, the nurses introduce it gradually and the patient does not suffer. Its the interplay of the technology, the professionals, the biological process and, obviously the patient and the beliefs and uncertainty.
Likewise a completely dependent MND patient will requite 16 full time nurses to provide for his needs. They might feel like a burden. Again its an interplay between the patients needs, symptoms and the professionals and technology we use to meet these needs.
If we overlay on this situations the knowledge that the patient could simply take their own life, its not clear to me that this would alleviate suffering.
My grandmother, who I visited today, is a 93yo COPD patient.
She can't breathe. She can't use the bathroom without help. She can't hardly move. She's hooked up to a nasal cannula 100% of the time. Albuterol breathing exercises 4x a day means she can't sleep more than six hours at a time because if she skips one, even on O2, she experiences suffocation.
She coughs so badly that she has constant rib/spine fractures so she's on and off narcotic painkillers that only make life bearable in doses enough to turn her brain into mush.
She wants to die. She's done. She won life. She's the last lady standing. Every single friend from her youth is gone. It's over.
I've already told her that when I get into my 60s I am going to stockpile a cache of painkillers and when the time comes go out on my own terms. There is an exact and precise 0.0% chance that my family is going to cry out in the hallway for days/weeks while I shit/piss myself in bed and slowly drown to death as my organs fail.
But it's too late for my grandmother because she waited until she was under the watchful eye of the skilled nursing facility nightmare.
In my idealized world, there is no violence, no accidents, and all diseases have been cured except for the inevitable and unstoppable phenomenon of heart failure and 100% of ALL deaths are medically-assisted suicide, decided on by the individual once they reach the point where your heart can no longer support independent living but before you get to the Morphine downward spiral.
I am a volunteer FF/EMT so I've seen my fair share of end of life patients in the last 25 years and apparently I am the only responsible adult in my family so I've handled the hospice phase for every member of my family for the last 20 years.
It is incomprehensible to me that anyone who has any exposure to death whatsoever does not fully support a person's right to determine the time and manner of their death-- even if it comes with problems.
The only reasons I can come up with for not supporting it are: a financial stake in prolonged expensive end-of-life care, the belief that the patients are too stupid to determine their fate, and/or trying to impose their personal religious beliefs on the masses.
For some terminal patients, there are types of pain that no amount of morphine or money can fix.
I'm thankful to know that when its my time to go, I'll have the choice to skip enduring several days of torture should I wish.
If I am in horrendous and incurable pain, I hope I have the option to calmly and painlessly end my own life without having to worry about my loved ones going to prison for it.
It requires extreme naivete to believe that this will not rapidly shift from doctor assisted suicide to mandatory removal of medical benefits except "end of life care". The medical-insurance complex in the US cannot wait for this to happen.
What makes Canada so different from other countries where this didn't happen?
It's just another insanity-driving information warfare topic.
Yes, let's imagine all the horrible things that could happen because the government suddenly allowed something that happened anyway - people committed suicide in end of life situations all the time - and let's base it off this one country where the law wasn't written well enough or enforcement is lax or whatever.
Let's use that as an example of why this should be banned always, forever, in all situations, because the X abuse of this in country Y shows it should never be done.
I have family who's dying with dementia. If I ever get into that situation, which I hope I don't, I hope people end it with my permission.
I believe a patient currently & their family members are required to state what kind of care a person should have if things go wrong before a surgery.
Why could the law not just continue this by adding an additional option that states when you would want assisted suicide? I would think lawmakers could specify that insurance or doctors are not allowed to make this decision or let it effect their services.
in single-payer government funded healthcare systems (Canada UK), medically assisted suicide is ENORMOUS cost savings.
imagine paying taxes all your life and hoping to get a good care in later stage of your life, and government just MAIDs you instead of providing care
The current UK/CA social contract seems to be: you work for 45+ years and pay taxes, but when you get old and sick and need medical care, we will just MAID you and instead give away all your taxes to welfare recipients
I think it's going to be pretty optional. You can ask for it. They can't just MAID you.
The Overton window shifts gradually. They are already boasting about cost savings to the government from MAID https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3947481
In the US there will be share-holder lawsuits against insurance companies that do not enforce this strictly enough. It's just a return to a time when only the wealthy could receive medical care - this time it's just being marketed better.
You seem to be confused about how US medical insurance companies operate. First, the majority of terminal patients are on government Medicare or Medicaid health plans. Second, commercial insurers have their profits capped by a minimum 85% medical loss ratio so they have no direct financial incentive to restrict care or push plan members towards assisted suicide. Rather the opposite.
As if this legislation in the US would not entirely upend the current rules and regulations. That's exactly the issue - you can't say "well currently things are X, and introducing Y won't change anything" when Y does, in fact, change everything. A positive example of this was EMTALA in 1986 when the US gvt told hospitals "if you want to bill Medicare you have to provide ER treatment to everyone." That was a radical change to the way in which medical care had been provided in the US up to that point. Introducing any form of assisted suicide introduces many complex legal issues just around liability from a practice standpoint - to say nothing of the complexities of who determines what even constitutes legal authority for the decision itself.
The government can't do that to you. You do realise that, right?
The government does not have to - like I said this is just a marketing campaign. What is to stop the introduction of "lower cost" insurance tiers if you opt in to a "limited care" plan that would allow you to be terminated instead of treated if the treatment cost is above a threshold value? What happens when people are convinced that seeking care = being selfish, or when the elderly are seen entirely as burdens on society even if they are not sick but using social welfare programs? If you think this is crazy talk I honestly don't believe you are aware of the evils well-intentioned people are capable of committing.
They tell explicitly that https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3947481
Why do you think they can't do it? The government can always just say, "We aren't treating your diseases anymore. We will put you out of your misery whenever you like however."
In a democracy, you vote for the other guy.
Do you live in a democracy?
This poll showed widespread support for MAID in the UK.
https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/assisted-dying/public-opin...
Every single constituency supports law change: Three-quarters of respondents (75%) said that they would support making it lawful for someone to seek assisted dying in the UK, with just 14% against
Support for changing the law consistently high regardless of voters’ political affiliation
Two-thirds (66%) of respondents with faith support law change, including 69% of Christians
Yes most people are against war too yet you don't see people voting their way out of that now do you?
If assisted dying is on the table, it won't be long before prescribed dying is too. I am not as hopeful as you that normal political processes will prevent that, but one can dream.
You don’t seem to have any hope at all. The stuff you’re talking about is wildly dystopian, and hopefully would just be rejected in any meaningful democracy.
You want to know what prescribed dying looks like? Look at any autocracy, see their political prisoners dying in jail or by execution.
If the majority of a population want reasonable MAID rights, then it’s within their democratic right to get it. The rejection of this is autocracy by ignoring the popular will.
I'm saying that there isn't much space between assisted dying and prescribed dying. People will be diagnosed with mental issues and encouraged to kill themselves. If you're a political troublemaker then that will definitely happen.
I might be a pessimist but I don't think I'm wrong. Everything tends to be abused, especially when it involves government. So be careful what you wish for and watch for tyranny at every turn.
Which war are you referring to? Some wars are popular, others not. During the 2020 US presidential election campaign, Joe Biden promised to end the war in Afghanistan and after he took office he did it. In a democracy, voters absolutely do influence these policies.
The war in Afghanistan was already slated to end but Biden screwed up the withdrawal leaving the Taliban with about $80 billion in high-tech weapons. He also got us into something even worse in Ukraine and supports a bunch of war in the Middle East. Is this all his fault? I don't think he is the one making decisions. But he certainly hasn't been an anti-war president. He wasn't suddenly elected because of Afghanistan either after 20 years of our involvement. He was mostly elected because people expected he would end covid lockdowns or somehow end the pandemic, and things only got worse under his leadership.
First reading, there are lots of stage before the bill is passed.
It look like Parliament, via private members bill working at its best.
Lots of debate, lots of people listening to the debate and then voting.
I watched the debate as it was happening on Sky News and it seemed to be one the most respectful debates in a long time when it comes to a divisive issue (cough cough Brexit).
This was the second reading fyi.
Out of curiosity why do people need permission or help from their government for this? Is it related to life insurance? Or is it that in some cases people can not get to the hardware store for a mask, hose, some duct tape and a tank of nitrogen? Or is it a business thing meaning someone is trying to corner the market on those crazy expensive suicide pods?
I don't want to die. However, I can imagine many scenarios that are worse than death. In many of them I am too incapacitated to arrange my own painless suicide. Allowing third parties to help in these circumstances, with appropriate controls to ensure this freedom isn't abused, seems to me the least bad option.
> Or is it that in some cases people can not get to the hardware store for a painters face mask, the corresponding hose with the 40mm NATO connector, some duct tape and a tank of nitrogen?
Certainly part of it. Some people by the time they have no other hope are physically incapable of doing that.
Some people would rather not DIY such a consequential thing the same way they rather not brew their own antibiotics or do their own dentistry. Obviously in this case the “worst” which might happen is that they don’t die but suffer even more pain and indignities.
It is also the legal risk for those who remain. Every time someoen DIYs their end as you write it there is a police investigation. (As there should be, to make sure that there were no trickery around the death.) Depending on how things go your loved ones might get arrested and thrown into prison (if the system believes they killed you, or even if something they did or accused of doing is deemed to have “assisted” you). Similarly they might not be able to inherit after you if they were deemed to have assisted in your suicide. And that can be some small thing, like your partner driving you to the hardware store, or paying for the purchase, or helping you tighten a NATO connector. Now they lost you, they might have lost their home and they might be looking down the barrel of a risky legal case with years of prison as a possibility. That is not something anybody would wish on their loved ones.
All of that makes sense. I guess if I were in that situation I would make a video explaining what I was going to do, then another one showing me setting it all up, send that to my attorney and local law enforcement chief since they are slow to read emails and then park myself outside the mortuary with a letter and copy of the video pinned to my clothes and a final video of me doing the deed to remove any ambiguity. Oh, and a receipt for all the gear.
Hmm. I’m feeling a bit worried about discussing this topic in this much detail. I’m sure it is just pure intelectual curriosity for you but many reads this forum. If someone is thinking about any of this beyond a thought experiment please reach out to someone. I know the going can be incredibly hard sometimes but things can change with time.
I guess what you describe above sounds sensible. There are two practical problems with it.
One is that you are, by all evidence of your comment, an individual with above average inteligence and planning ability. I have a suspicion if we leave you on a deserted island in a few years you might be halfway on your way to your own iron age. Unfortunately not everyone who is smithen by devastating chronic suffering is as lucky as you are in that department. The rules of the society has to work for everyone, not just the smart ones. For each and everyone who thinks through what you did there are hundreds and hundreds who can’t and won’t.
Then the other problem, society wise, is that typically by the point someone reaches the end of the road and their illness is deemed incurrabble they are not well. Long illness weakened them, maybe they are paralysed, or blinded. What you describe is hard, but even harder if one does not have all their physical faculties. And that is very sad, but unfortunately that is the main case legislation like this aims at.
At least that is how I think about when i think about the purposes of such law.
I think this is to do with the ‘assisted’ component. I.e. When people need help from others to die.
If the law didn’t cover this, then people who provided assistance would be open to criminal prosecution.
That makes sense. If that is the case it creates yet another question for me. If someone sends for a driver to go shop and pick up the aforementioned items are they culpable?
> If someone sends for a driver to go shop and pick up the aforementioned items are they culpable?
That greatly depends on the jurisdiction. In general though the issue here is that you don't want to die by shooting yourself, but you want to die by taking a pill. And the issue really is that nobody is going to sell this stuff to you unless they know they cannot be charged for it.
Assisted suicide is legal in Austria for a few years and the main thing that it has changed is the availability of humane ways of dying.
progress should mean learning from the successes of other countries, not the disasters
Many opponents to the bill have been very cagey about their reasons for opposing it, and eventually admit it's for nebulous "religious reasons".
Personally I'd like the right to die with dignity if I were unfortunate enough to find myself facing horrible, imminent, certain death.
I'm glad it passed and I hope it makes it into law.
I dislike these proposals because they always eventually encourage the erosion of help for people who very much want to live. I don't think the end of life is very dignified, but I don't trust the government to ever decide to spend money helping people in pain reduce their pain, instead of shrugging and saying, "Well, you can choose to die" We're seeing this in Canada and it was utterly predictable
How much money should governments spend to keep a patient alive one more month? If you've actually thought this through then you should be able to reply with a specific number. Resources are limited so anything spent on caring for those patients can't be spent on other priorities. And don't try to weasel out of the question by claiming that we need to raise taxes or cut military spending or whatever; no matter what we do with other budget line items the answer always has to come down to a specific number.
Does the Bible say you shouldn't end your life if you're dying of something incurable and terribly painful?
Regardless of what a bible says it is indeed the view of many religious people.
They probably change their mind pretty quick if they witness a loved one go through endless pain for no reason. Some of them, I'd think. Others, I'm sure, would tell them how much wonderful the gates of heaven will look when they get there.
Yes. Every Jew and Christian, until recently, interpreted thou shall not kill (more accurately translated as murder) as a ban on killing yourself or another with the intention of killing yourself.
Thats odd. Anyway seems like that is a possible reading but not all possible readings.
If every Jew and Christian until like 100 years ago think that was the correct interpretation then that is the canonical interpretation. Calling in a possible reading is just not correct.
It would seem that many exceptions were carved out to allow Christian led crusades, pograms, etc. Jewish military history is extensive and embraced more than simple stern words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_military_history.
I am not sure what your point even is. What is typically referred to as killing (thou shalt not kill) is referring to murder / unjustified killing. This is how Jews and Christians have interpreted it for almost the entirety of their existence. It is only in the more recent years that a small minority have disagreed.
There is no exception because it is not talking about just killings only unjust ones.
Wars, and killings within them, can be just (look up just war theory). The point of a war, at least from a Christian perspective, is not to kill people, but to stop an invasion, protect innocents or the like. If it isn't doing that then the war is not just. If you are wanting to kill, rather than protect innocents or whatever then you are fighting for the wrong reason. This is what is known as the principle of double effect.
The Crusades were intended to stop the Muslim invasion, regain Christian lands, prevent the fall of the Byzantine Empire, allow for safe travel of pilgrims, etc. Those are considered just things to protect. (Obviously not all people in the Crusades had the same motives, but that is on them not the war in general).
Also, just because Christians, Jews, or whoever do something, doesn't mean it is inline with their faith. People justify bad things, ignore teachings, don't actually believe, etc.
To give a more modern example and one relevant to the thread, jumping on a live grenade is not considered suicide because you are not attempting to kill yourself, but to stop others from being blown up. You know you are probably going to die, but since you are not intending to kill yourself it is not an unjust killing. Jesus said "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends".
The point is a simple one, in the space of a few comments you've moved from:
to meaning that there has been considerable latitude in the reading and interpretation of what in modern english is stated as "Thou shalt not kill"There will be some who interpret:
as making suicide acceptable so as to not place a burden on friends and family due to { reasons }.There are many Christians, Jews, and Muslims in this world and many interpretations of the many and varied texts and translations.
I may not have been as clear as I should have been.
I was making a distinction between killing and murder. All murders are killings, not all killings are murders. If you kill somebody it may be acceptable or it may not be. Killing somebody in defense of another is fine so long as you are intending to protect the innocent not to kill. You may end up killing, but it would not be murder and as such would be justifiable.
Bringing up the latitude and interpretation is a major problem some Christians have, but this is a modern problem. The Church, historical, had always believed there needs to be people involved to help guide people. The Bible itself makes the point in Acts 8: "So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him."
You are highlighting a reason why somebody shouldn't just read the Bible and assume they know what it means. This is a problem that only applies to a portion of the Protestant churches not the remaining Protestant churches or the Churches that existed before the reformation (Catholic, Orthodox, etc).
You bringing up English translations is why I was making it clear that murder was a more accurate way of understanding the decree against killing. I knew if I didn't specify that it was only murder, somebody would ask about war. Apparently I wasn't clear enough.
Can you find a single prominent Christian or Jewish scholar, theologian, saint, etc who lived 1000 years ago who believed that Jesus was allowing suicide?
Like I said, this is a modern problem because some Christian churches have gone off the rails and have rejected the traditional views held by the Church. They are clearly wrong. Using them as justification for something is ridiculous. Imagine if somebody said Stalin / Mao / whoever was a communist. Communists are atheists so that means atheists can kill people like those people did. You would argue that those people do not represent an accurate description of atheists. Just as you would reject that argument against atheists, I reject your argument against Jews and Christians.
In Canada they have proposed assisted dying for young people suffering from depression. What better way to harvest organs and save money than by making unproductive young people want to die?
If this was seriously restricted to people facing severe debilitating injuries or pain I might be more in favor. But you know it won't stop there.
Why Assisted Dying is only being pushed and promoted in White Christian countries?
It is not allowed in Muslim countries and is explicitly banned in Israel.
Orthodox Christian is not allowing MAID as well
It's also legal in Colombia.
It's easier to go down a slope than go up it. It's a tragedy.
Most doctors, all disability organisations and charities, all hospices and elderly care organisations opposed this. A visit to the doctor should never even have the possibility of a conversation such as "have you considered dying? I can help". This was decided by people who are not old, not disabled, not vulnerable.
Additionally, we have a case now where the national health service will in one section prevent ill people considering suicide and help them out of it but will in another section help those who are considering suicide and encourage them into it! It fundamentally changes the nature of what a health service is.
The Samartians number is 116 123
The Samaritan's motto is "every life lost to suicide is a tragedy"
Can you cite your sources?
https://jme.bmj.com/content/47/12/e64
This paper suggests the vast majority of disability rights organisations in great britain are not publicly opposed to assisted dying.
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/ethics/end-of-life...
This survey of doctors presents data that does not correspond with your claim that most doctors oppose assisted dying.
https://www.hospiceuk.org/assisted-dying
Hospice UK, a sector-support body, is publicly neutral. (which aligns with most hospices i can find public statements from)
I live in Canada. I know people who chose MAiD (our euthanasia process) way because of certain conditions (e.g. one in 80s, with incurable cancer, constant pain). There is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing someone suffer, endlessly, begging to go, but having no avenue to go peacefully.
I saw my grandmother go through the most intense amount of pains for about a decade in early 2000s (at about ~70) while she lived with us. We did everything we could. Seeing my mom cry endlessly throughout years rewired my brain to the point where I will always support assisted suicide.
I really don't care if it's "immoral", "slippery slope", "against the natural way of life" and so on. If, at any point in the future, my parents are suffering and decide they want to go out with their own way, I want them to have the choice. And I want that choice to be available for me as well, if it ever comes to that.
> encourage them into it!
They will not encourage them into it. That's not the idea.
Cite sources for your assertions, they appear to be false.
The Samaritans. I remember a story about that in the bible, explains your conservative Christian views
It's a charity.
Its name derives from the biblical Parable of the Good Samaritan, although the organisation itself is not religious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans_(charity)
Samaritans is a registered charity aimed at providing emotional support to anyone in emotional distress, struggling to cope or at risk of suicide throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, often through its telephone helpline.
The quote and viewpoint you are expressing is based in conservative Christianity regardless
What would a non-conservative Christian viewpoint on this subject be?
I don’t care about Christianity in general because I reject it, partly for this reason
I’m confused. Are you saying a suicide hotline is a distinctly conservative Christian thing? That’s sort of nonsensical.
No I’m obviously saying that saying every early end of life is a tragedy is a Christian conservative thing
Conservative Christianity does not have a monopoly on the sanctity of life.
Okay well I condemn any organisation that does as evil since I have Love and Compassion
[dead]
A couple of articles with more critical views, the first discusses how proponents of the law have been avoiding scrutiny ahead of the bill, and have been talking up safeguards that aren't actually in their proposal:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/history-will-not-be-kind...
The second argues that this will disproportionately affect women, who already suffer more under domestic abuse including being killed by partners, predicting that this will be used similarly:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/25/assisted-dying-i...
According to this report, the main charity that is pushing this, Death in Dignity, uses case studies from violent men who murdered their wives and has men working for them who have killed women.