I don't think assisted suicide is dystopian, I think it's 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 we'll keep a corpse animated for years just because we can't let go is pretty fucking dystopian though.
My greats fear isn't to die in an accident, it's to barely survive an accident. To be kept alive but with no quality of life and in constant pain, that's not life, that's hell.
I don't want people in that situation to be euthanized, i just want them to be given the choice, because that is what i would wantI don't like it because, as a person with chronic mental illness, it's legitimizing me committing suicide rather than learning to cope with my symptoms. I already think too much about how nice it'll 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, what's 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 shouldn't 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 "you know what, you're right, you're completely broken and there's no possible way to fix you. Let's just kill you instead."
What you're referring to is called genocide. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone promote euthanasia as a solution to depression, or any disability, outside fascism — and fuck those assholes. Their opinions are psychopathic and irrelevant.
This isn't about you. Euthanasia is about personal freedom and choice. It's 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. That's not something I'm willing to live through, and I'd 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.
Former funeral director. I understand what this doctor is saying. I've sat with many people planning assisted death and they were understandably happy that their pain and suffering will soon end. It's 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, they're thankful.
A while ago the ethical question was raised about MAID in Canada on how they're supposed to distinguish between "genuinely ill people making good use of the service" and "depressed people who have simply lost hope and are using MAID as a more formal way to kill themselves." As far as I know, they really can't. Not to mention the stories of people turning to MAID as an alternative to dealing with Canada's broken healthcare system. A healthy society doesn't encourage its members to kill themselves.
