Comment by jonhohle 3 days ago
The alternative being when someone becomes inconvenient to others we should encourage their death? What good is compassion or empathy when the lesser in society could just go off and die, right? Why stop at incurable diseases? Political opponents, coworkers, nasty service workers, double parkers, lawyers, and many other groups cause a lot of anguish and suffering.
How many “legitimate” assisted suicides are worth one questionable case? There are no foolproof guardrails, and you’re inviting moral hazard.
Doctor to a high degree of certainty know which diseases are terminal or cause a deteriorating condition that will cause pain where the person has all of their cognitive ability. That’s why I carved out Alzheimer’s or dementia.
I would argue that banning it is not an “easy solution” but in fact the hardest solution.
Nobody's saying that anyone should be encouraged to die. That is an evil thing. But that does not mean that people should not be permitted to choose to die vs suffer.
You are assuming no advance directive. We are talking about cases where there are advanced directives.
(Although there are cases I would be ok with it without--to me, what's important is the mind. To me personhood extends from first consciousness to last consciousness. Once you are sure the last consciousness has passed I attach no value to the body that remains.)
There’s no bright line. Suffering is a subjective experience. Lack of prohibition is tantamount to encouragement.
Right now, the political party in power openly wants undesirables, especially homeless people, to simply drop dead and stop bothering everyone else.
The relevant word during our fascist rise is schadenfreude. People not only want to see them drop dead for having the audacity to be dirty and unhoused - they want to see them suffer, hard, the entire time.
You gotta find a way to stop making the inflicting of pain on others pleasurable.
No. But I think that people should be able to decide when they want to end their lives if it is because of pain that won’t get any better, a terminal illness that causes pain etc. while they have all of their cognitive functions.
But we should put guardrails around if the reason for assisted suicide is not pressure from relatives, depression, etc.