Choosing to "euthanize" yourself is something that is so predominately chosen in fits of mental illness that society has probably made the right choice in banning it outright. Further, I think there's a strong argument that other people shouldn't be allowed to add any weight to the idea of killing you...
As someone else brought up, there can be disagreements between family and an individual about when the right time for them to die is in both directions. Even in America this can be observed with things like life support for the very elderly, an intervention that is sometimes necessary for continued life but not considered euthanasia to forego. You won't have to dig very deep to find a doctor that has seen families argue about this.
So, if you say "only I can make the decision," then mental illness becomes a lot more deadly than it has to be. If you say, "other people can weigh in," then what do you do when they want you to die more than you do (and start pressuring you, and you're old, and already depressed...)? This leaves us at our current state, which is "nobody gets to make the decision."
You’re so worried about making the wrong choice, yet you advocate for a situation where the law makes a blanket one-size-fits-all choice that’s inevitably going to be the wrong one sometimes.
You (rightly) worry about a situation where someone is pressured into dying, or chooses to die because their brain is broken. But what about situations where someone is suffering horribly with no relief to come, and they want to end it, and their family agrees, and their doctors, but everyone is prevented from carrying out their wishes because of a blanket ban?
Quite. By the same token, if I took my healthy dog into my vet to have it euthanized, I am sure my vet would refuse to do so, and probably inform the relevant authority.
Actually that happens often enough that it has a name: convenience euthanasia. I believe most vets will try to find alternatives before they go through with it, but some physically healthy animals are definitely put down due to behavioral issues.
Some vets will do it but not most according to my vet and vet tech friends. (Anecdotes, unfortunately.)
They find even the proper application of euthanasia terribly emotionally draining though. It's being confronted by the feelings of the human family that is the worst for them.
In some countries (like NL) assisted suicide is only allowed when certain criteria is met, such a terminal illness with no chance of improvement, etc.
Having seen some of my grandparents slowly fade with dementia, I'm sad they didn't have the choice to end it on their terms. Whether they would have chosen to do so I don't know.
But the individual freedom to end your own pointless suffering seems very reasonable to me.
Dementia is a good example - how far gone can someone be before they are no longer able to request death? At present, you cannot be diagnosed until you have already suffered enough decline to have seen a doctor about it. Most people think the difference between suicide and euthanasia is that euthanasia is requested with a "sound mind," but the cases where euthanasia seems the most opportune are those where no sound mind is available.
Exactly. Even if you try to make the decision ahead of time with a sound mind, where do you draw the line? And even if the line is drawn, what happens if you change your mind later but you're in the late stages? Which "you" gets precedence?
Perhaps you would plan ahead with a "living will" if those are available to you that states in the event that you are determined to no longer be capable of managing your affairs that you be euthanized.
I am planning to set one up soon though I will hopefully have a few more decades ahead of me. It will specifically state that in the event I can no longer manage my affairs I wish to be transported to the nearest locale in which I can have my life ended.
> It will specifically state that in the event I can no longer manage my affairs I wish to be transported to the nearest locale in which I can have my life ended.
Ha ha, "manage my affairs"... maybe give yourself a slightly longer rope :)
My grandmother sure can't do her own taxes, but she has no illness - she's just old, and world has changed around her.
Assuming you have well behaved kids, you'll likely stop managing your affairs long before you loose your health.
Nothing is every perfect -- neither is dying slowly.
But we have reasonable legal frameworks for refusing treatment already (even in cases of dementia, where a guardian makes the decision). We can build reasonable frameworks for making assisted suicide decisions too.
And should these frameworks have flaws we can improve them.
I won't outline a proposal here, but it's not rocket science to require a paper signed while of sound mind, and then giving a guardian permission to pull the plug later. It's not rocket science to limit it to people with fatal conditions, etc.
> This leaves us at our current state, which is "nobody gets to make the decision."
Except that is not our current state. Our current state is that a bizarre legal process makes the decision, and that process is different in every state.
Any time you have uncertainty, you necessarily have both type I and type II errors. You can tweak your decision criteria so that you get more of one or more of the other, but you can never eliminate errors entirely. The fundamental problem we have is that we can't agree which is worse: having someone die before their time, or having someone live past it.
One thing that would help is to recognize that our choice of terminology is hurting us: we talk about "saving lives" but in fact there is no such thing as "saving" a life, only extending one. Once you look at it that way you realize almost immediately that if you're going to allocated resources to extending a life, it probably makes more sense to, say, allocate those resources to a 20-year-old rather than a 95-year-old.
>in fact there is no such thing as "saving" a life, only extending one.
Most of the objection to euthanasia is focused on the case where you are administering deadly medications to a person that can survive on their own. Ending life support is another debate, although one that shares many properties and players with euthanasia.
Yeah, that's actually another thing that I think is messing us up, this idea that "letting nature take its course" is somehow better in and of itself than intervention. If you know that the outcome of "letting nature take its course" is going to be a bucketful of pain, and you have the option to eliminate that pain with a low-cost intervention, and you choose not to intervene, then IMHO that pain is on you every bit as much as if you'd actively tortured the person. (All this is assuming that the subject consents, of course. Some people might choose to experience the pain. I can respect that.)
On the other hand, I really don't see the salient difference between euthanizing someone and sedating them until they die of starvation and dehydration. Once you start to intervene with the intent of producing a painless death, why not just get it over with?
But what is "life support" in a hospital? Do providing food and water count? Would it be ok to also remove those forms of life support to allow one to finally die if it's their wish? Stop providing heat to their room?
If so, why so? Why is that form of induced death better or worse than administering a drug? If not, why not? It's clearly a form of hospital administered life support just like a breathing machine.
I don't have the answer, but it's not a cut and dry question. Like most things around life and conscienceness it's complicated.
>society has probably made the right choice in banning it outright
If you're equating society with government, you're not correct in every case. Assisted suicide is legal in some jurisdictions. California is mentioned in the article, but another example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada
> This leaves us at our current state, which is "nobody gets to make the decision."
Someone always decides what's right, either yourself or your family or the state (usually via law).
You opt in favour of state and conveniently ignore the will of the people who would choose family or "they themselves" because law is not a person and therefore it can decide.
This is not what actually happens in practice. There are a number of states with "Death with dignity" laws. Read up: https://www.deathwithdignity.org/faqs/
The website you linked does not address the situation described in the comment above - where family members disagree with an individual about the time of death, and pressure them in to making a different decision than they would otherwise. (If it does, I missed it. For this reason it's often helpful to reprint your quote in the comment that contains the link.)
Again, this can already be seen happening in life-support cases. I won't say "ask any doctor," because I haven't asked every doctor, but it's not too hard to find first-hand accounts.
As someone else brought up, there can be disagreements between family and an individual about when the right time for them to die is in both directions. Even in America this can be observed with things like life support for the very elderly, an intervention that is sometimes necessary for continued life but not considered euthanasia to forego. You won't have to dig very deep to find a doctor that has seen families argue about this.
So, if you say "only I can make the decision," then mental illness becomes a lot more deadly than it has to be. If you say, "other people can weigh in," then what do you do when they want you to die more than you do (and start pressuring you, and you're old, and already depressed...)? This leaves us at our current state, which is "nobody gets to make the decision."