A while ago the ethical question was raised about MAID in Canada on how theyâre supposed to distinguish between âgenuinely ill people making good use of the serviceâ and âdepressed people who have simply lost hope and are using MAID as a more formal way to kill themselves.â As far as I know, they really canât. Not to mention the stories of people turning to MAID as an alternative to dealing with Canadaâs broken healthcare system. A healthy society doesnât encourage its members to kill themselves.
Former funeral director. I understand what this doctor is saying. Iâve sat with many people planning assisted death and they were understandably happy that their pain and suffering will soon end. Itâs normal to be afraid of death and not understand why someone would want to die until you sit across from someone with bones growing out through their skin because of cancer or someone who will soon lose the ability to move their muscles and be trapped in their paralyzed body until they die. The most common reason to not follow through with a planned death is death. As in, the person waited until the last possible moment to request assisted death. Nobody wants this until they really need it, and when they really need it, theyâre thankful.
I donât think assisted suicide is dystopian, I think itâs incredibly progressive and I wish it was more widely available. We give our pets more dignity in death than our loved ones and it sucks. The fact that weâll keep a corpse animated for years just because we canât let go is pretty fucking dystopian though.
I donât like it because, as a person with chronic mental illness, itâs legitimizing me committing suicide rather than learning to cope with my symptoms. I already think too much about how nice itâll be to be dead and not having to worry about dealing with my symptoms. If one day I decided that my life was no longer bearable, whatâs the practical difference between me making an attempt on my own life that allegedly needs to be urgently stopped, and me going through months of paperwork and evaluations to do the same thing? If suicide is wrong, if we shouldnât use a permanent solution for a temporary problem, then why should we turn it into a medical procedure? It feels dystopian because the medical industry, in my case, would be throwing up its hands and saying âyou know what, youâre right, youâre completely broken and thereâs no possible way to fix you. Letâs just kill you instead.â
What youâre referring to is called genocide. I donât think Iâve ever heard of anyone promote euthanasia as a solution to depression, or any disability, outside fascism â and fuck those assholes. Their opinions are psychopathic and irrelevant.
This isnât about you. Euthanasia is about personal freedom and choice. Itâs about enabling the people who have terminal illnesses, and are guaranteed a slow and painful death, the ability to choose a painless death on their own terms. Watching my father die of dementia is what I imagine hell would be like. Forced to live in a prison of your own mind, unable to remember anyone or anything, or what happened a minute ago, for x number of years until you forget how to swallow, then die of pneumonia. Thatâs not something Iâm willing to live through, and Iâd prefer to choose to die a few years earlier to avoid it. The opposition to euthanasia directly causes millions of people to suffer needlessly. It removes their freedom and choice.
If thatâs the case, then why does Canada allow people only with mental illnesses and addictions to seek out MAID? And how do you know for sure that this isnât going to expand as a cost-cutting measure throughout any healthcare system that enables it?
Assisted suicide isnât for the temporary problems. This is for people who are definitely going to die imminently, and their symptoms and pain are only going to get worse until they do. For depression, there might be medications or therapies or other treatments.
When you are riddled with cancers and canât walk because the tumours have grown so big your joints are being forced apart, when the tumours in your brain press on your optic nerves causing partial and worsening blindness and on your speech centres so it gets harder and harder to talk, when you canât even eat or drink because youâre too weak to push anything down your throat into your stomach, that is what this is for. So you wonât have to ask your eldest son to kill you and end your suffering, like my mum did. So you donât have to be that eldest son.
I hadnât heard, that was a big mistake on their part. I definitely understand why youâre taking it that way, then. And, double-damn them for reinforcing this perception of such programs; makes it much harder to get properly compassionate versions piloted elsewhere.
My greats fear isnât to die in an accident, itâs to barely survive an accident. To be kept alive but with no quality of life and in constant pain, thatâs not life, thatâs hell.
I donât want people in that situation to be euthanized, i just want them to be given the choice, because that is what i would want
