Anti-euthanasia campaigners point out the what if you have a relative who just wants to bump off their elderly Mum and Dad without their consent? This happens in practice anyway, and often goes undetected as a 'natural death'. That isn't choice anymore than being forced to live is.
I'd rather be able to have on record what my wishes are in a situation where my quality of life is too low to want to be here anymore. How is that much different from people who have Do Not Resuscitate on their medical charts? Ad astra per aspera
Given the uproar that ensues when euthanasia or assisted suicide is debated, I don't think it is likely for the state to develop a narrative along the lines of "don't you think it's time you toddled off now, you burdensome thing?" It would be a severe breach of human rights to put pressure on people to die.
I suppose you can argue that the state does that with severely disabled babies by removing medical care that keeps the child alive. Perhaps withdrawal of care for elderly people would be a similar approach but they certainly couldn't actively end a life and legally get away with it.
The process of removing care and medical attention from either elderly or terminally/chronically ill people without their consent would be challenged (I hope).
One of the problems for the UK is that these issues are hidden and taboo. You don't talk about death. You don't openly look at the options. You don't admit that a burden has become too much and you need out - for both the ill person and anyone who is caring for them. It is the lack of openness I think that poses more of a risk for people. Ad astra per aspera
Human Rights - everyone has the right to life. For a public discourse to develop in favour of pressurising individuals to go before they are ready would involve continuous and systemic breaches of human rights legislation at all levels. The UN exists to monitor prevent such abuse by states.
Try to replace "life" in this case with "asylum if their country of origin is unwilling or unable to protect them against persecution."
Are you still optimistic?
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
The arguments are very similar on both sides of the coin. Stay alive, face abuse and indignity and not have the choice to go. Or have the choice to go and potentially be forced into taking that option sooner rather than later.
I don't think that my wish to make the choice to go when I am ready should criminalise someone else. But whether I stay or go, there is always the potential for wrongdoing.
How common do you think it would be for people to make such a choice? As pointed out elsewhere people can choose to refuse medical intervention. Choosing to cut short a prolonged period of pain and ill health is just one step on from that. Ad astra per aspera
Is not the right to live and consequently end your life as you see fit, as long as you do not harm others by your actions, an alienable right?
There are a number of ways to respond and think about that question, but a simple way to start is to ask what are your underlying assumptions? It appears that you are assuming that providing a legal right to die to some people has zero impact on others who would prefer to live under the same, hopeless circumstances. That is, a right to die is independent of a right to live, even if both rights can be traced somehow to the flowery language of the US Declaration of Independence. I question that assumption because it appears to directly contradict everything else we (meaning most people who visit this site regularly) have already implicitly or explicitly professed to believe about how the world works. Namely, we progressives reject the neoclassical assumption of individual omnipotence and omniscience when making choices and acting on them, which underlie all arguments for greater privatization and a very minor role for the state in capitalist society.
Instead we accept the institutional critique which underlies most "progressive" intellectual endeavors, such as feminism, critical theory, and most "pro-state" ways of approaching economics and other social sciences. In our framework for thinking, individuals have very limited power and knowledge about the world, so their choices are inherently biased by the language and institutional contexts in which they find themselves. "Bounded rationality" is the technical term for how progressive thinkers believe the world works.
So, if you don't believe that free-market economics is the default solution to a social problems such as inequitable distribution of medical care, then you are implicitly rejecting the idea that a truly individual choice to die is even possible. An individual's options are necessarily bounded by the possibilities presented to that individual by language, values, and other social structures. (That's the essence of the progressive argument against Laissez-faire capitalism.) And if that is the case, then just changing a law to make death a socially acceptable option for hopelessly ill people must also affect, most likely negatively, the ability of similarly hopeless people to choose the socially more inconvenient path of living longer while burdening the community.
Put more simply, I don't believe that the myth of individualism is true. Individual welfare, everywhere and anywhere, is mostly dependent upon relationships with the larger community in which one finds oneself, and inalienable rights are one form of such a relationship in our current, rights-based political institutions. Therefore, it's not possible to assume that a right to die is independent of a right to live. Rather a right to die necessarily diminishes a right to live, and vice versa.
And this means, as I said elsewhere in this thread, that legal suicide is simply incompatible with social medicine. It might be compatible with a completely private system of medical care, the Laissez-faire utopia, but I don't believe such a utopia is possible, and you probably don't either.
As for the rest of your argument, while I can certainly see why you are worried that providing the legal basis for terminally ill people to end their lives may have negative impact and prove counterproductive for people just as sick but not willing to stop fighting the disease(s) and die, I am struggling to see the rationality in arguments that advocate the widespread conviction that if one is suffering from immense pain and there is no hope for them, they should nevertheless be stuffed with all kinds of medicines and kept alive at all cost for the sake of not letting them die even if that be their wish!
The right to refuse medical interventions has been on the books since the Nürnberg Declaration in 1947. Which came about... for obvious historical reasons, shall we say.
A parallel between the financial world and euthanasia is off because there is strict regulation on cases of euthanasia, while the current crisis shows there should be strict regulation in the financial world. Good government works. The exisiting and clear regulation on euthanasia shows precisely what is so wrong with the financial markets.
your medical system administrators want to "bump you off" in benign ways by being able to create a moral discourse around personal responsibility in opting for less expensive end-of-life comfort care, rather than burdening the state and your care providers with extending your problematic life.
If that's a case of "institutionalized perverse incentives", this is a non-issue, as the initiative which leads to euthanasia lies solely with the patient - this is so in the Netherlands, and I expect it to be likewise in other countries. The initiative simply does not lie with medical staff, or insurance companies.
Terminally ill or otherwise hopeless people may choose suicide because they don't want to inconvenience others within a language framework that ascribes, to varying degrees, moral deficiency to people who use social resources without being able to pay for them. Saying that suicide is a normal option for care rather than the current radical option that it is can help to change language and institutions to bias people toward death. I find that extremely problematic as our societies grow more and more dependent on community relationships instead of individual independence.
Legal suicide is incompatible with social medicine. There just isn't any way around it that I can see.
A Dutch patient doesn't easily get into the position before euthanasia is a legal option. I need to strongly underline that we are talking about terminally ill people.
For those people there rests little difference between terminal sedation and euthanasia, except that the first is often imposed through medical staff - unless specifically ruled out by the patient. The second is a determined choice only available when specifically requested by the patient. The choice of dying in this situation is crystal clear - either you drift out in an opiod induced stupour, or with a self-determined choice. That is, simply, the right to die - people who want to face their death themselves. That does not make it an easy choice. And not many choose for it, as Dutch numbers unambiguously reflect.
As it is, I'm proud to live in a country where citizens are granded that final important right of self-determination.
the staff there were angels of mercy, and the atmosphere anything but sombre.
sounds like the dutch don't see a need to sequester this from normal medical practice, and why should they? ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
I think a better argument in favor of legalization of suicide is related to something In Whales mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Euthanasia and suicide happen anyway, so perhaps legalization provides a degree of transparency which helps to mitigate the perverse incentives at least where they involve direct encouragement of others to choose death. (It wouldn't help the larger issue of presenting suicide as a morally superior option to continued treatment in order to avoid inconveniencing others. This isn't refuted by the Dutch experience and data either, because it doesn't show what the Dutch experience would have been if suicide and euthanasia were not already established parts of Dutch discourse by the 1980's when data on such things became available.)
