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Alternatively, once you become ill or disabled, your life is worth less because we will not allow you the autonomy to choose what to do with it. The right to die is something everyone has, except those too infirm to exercise it, apparently.
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May 23, 2015 16:24
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:Autonomy's a red herring: I can't kill get a doctor's help to kill myself if I'm "healthy". Nor do you need to. You are likely in a suitable mental and physical state to kill yourself unassisted. Telling someone who lacks the ability to kill themselves, but has the desire to do so, that they can't, is preying on their lack of autonomy to carry out an action, in a manner which is not enforceable on the physically and mentally capable.
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May 23, 2015 18:42
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And I would support your right to have access to that as well, but I don't think "You might get a slightly better version of this right than me so you shouldn't have it at all." is quite the best approach to basic bodily rights.
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May 24, 2015 03:40
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Supporting euthanasia and the right of people to decide to end their life does not preclude supporting alternatives. I would prefer that people don't feel it necessary to end their life but I also respect their right to do so. Indeed the primary opposition to it would come on the basis that taking your own life can harm others, either in the fallout or the method, medically assisted suicide would go a long way to help the latter.
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May 24, 2015 17:19
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As before, there are reasons to oppose suicide, a good one is that many methods of suicide are quite anti-social, and can cause serious physical and mental harm to bystanders. However, trying to ban suicide is obviously self defeating if you object to that, because prohibition doesn't work. You can't stop people killing themselves, but you can provide better managed methods of doing it which minimise harm to others. The other reason to object to it, which is that suicide can harm people close to the person who does it, is more difficult to address, but I would venture that if you figure out a way to reliably stop people making selfish decisions, please let us know because we could use that in a lot of places.
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May 24, 2015 18:53
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Guavanaut posted:Solutions should be focused on making living easier, not making dying harder. This also.
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May 24, 2015 19:28
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Ogmius815 posted:You don't think it's a bit of a jump from "mentally ill people are unfairly discriminated against" (which is true) to "we should just let depressed people kill themselves? Coming from a similar position, I disagree.
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May 24, 2015 20:19
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Ogmius815 posted:You think that teenagers should be able to kill themselves because (for example) X didn't want to go to the prom with them and the can't handle that in a healthy way because they have a mental illness and no one should try to stop them? Really? Like, seriously? For real? I thought that when you were suggesting you had considered suicide as a teenager you were undergoing daily verbal and physical abuse for most of your life. But, broadly, if your decision is sufficiently considered, I don't really see why people should be prevented from acting on it. It is your decision. Not somebody else's. Your life is something that you, and only you, are inextricably stuck with. If you feel that your quality of life is insufficient and do not possess the necessary autonomy to make it into something you like, it seems like a serious compounding of torment for somebody to also tell you that you can't choose not to live it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:35 on May 24, 2015 |
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May 24, 2015 20:33
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Ogmius815 posted:The distinction between these cases is not significant enough to change how we should think about them from a policy standpoint w/r/t suicide. Absolutely it's understandable why someone who has endured a lifetime of physical and mental abuse would think of killing themselves, but that doesn't meant hat outcome shouldn't be prevented. People who have undergone abuse can be treated and live happy and successful lives. Some kind of bizarre reified idea of personal autonomy shouldn't prevent from stopping preventable tragedies carried out by people who aren't dealing with their pain in a healthy way because they have a mental illnes that prevents them from making rational decisions. Also analogous: the case of disabled people. It is only a tragedy for the people still alive, the dead person isn't in a position to care. They aren't under an obligation to be treated and live the kind of life that makes you, the observer, feel happier. Whether or not you, the observer, feel good or bad about the person's choice isn't a good basis for a law. Their choice does not affect your ability to live in whatever manner you are able to choose. What is more important, that you don't have to feel like tragic things are happening, or that they receive the solution they have chosen? That they feel it necessary to choose suicide certainly challenges you to provide better alternatives, but telling people that in the absence of those alternatives that they cannot choose a less pleasant option, because you don't like the idea of that, well... That seems like you think your sense of aesthetics is more important than the right of another not to suffer. Preventing people from taking desperate solutions to suffering does not make suffering less prevalent. But it does make it less visible, and thus more easy to ignore, and not provide positive solutions to.
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May 24, 2015 20:47
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Ogmius815 posted:This assumes that the choice to die is made by someone who has the capacity to make rational choices. Depressed people do not have the capacity to make rational choices about whether or not they should live or die because they have a mental illness that prevents people from being able to think clearly about their lives (bad things seem worse than they are and get projected onto the future in ways that aren't necessarily inevitable; good things are ignored or minimized). I guess that means we shouldn't always "respect the choices of mentally ill people" but that's only controversial in the crazy logic of this thread. There's a difference between caring for people and treating them with respect and capitulating to all of their irrational demands. To that end I would suggest perhaps a month of waiting time between asking for and receiving the prescription, to ensure the decision is not a snap one. Otherwise, I don't think a law is capable of respecting the nuanced difference between a temporary inconvenience handled poorly with a good chance of recovery, and a prolonged period of suffering leading to a thoroughly defensible decision to end one's life. I'm going to require you to explain this as being in the best interest of the person in question. Do you feel that a blanket prohibition against medically assisted suicide is generally in the interest of those who may elect to use it? Do you think that preventing them from accessing a humane and managed form of suicide is going to increase their access to more constructive care? Do you think that making suicide more difficult is going to stop people ignoring the circumstances that lead to people desiring it? Do you think that preventing someone from killing themselves and putting them back into the situation they are trying to escape from is more, or less tragic than them succeeding? Do you think that the tragic part is that they killed themselves, or everything that lead up to it? Do you think that opposing suicide removes the cause of it?
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May 24, 2015 21:09
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Disinterested posted:I and the state disagree. The desire to take one's own life if one is physically healthy without exhaustive and continued application of all varieties of medical assistance possible is inherently irrational and in itself demonstrates lack of capacity to make a rational choice. That would be contingent on both an entirely anthropocentric and self-preservationist view of things.
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May 24, 2015 22:00
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Disinterested posted:to be clear, I mean in this thread's immediate context. I believe there could be other examples of rational suicide - for example, the Rawlsian/Kantian example of a general who poisons himself to avoid being tortured or forced to reveal vital secrets when he is about to be captured. Even in context of the thread it presupposes that living itself is inherently a positive experience, rather than neutral, and that preserving life itself morally good, rather than also neutral. It is entirely possible for living to be a negative experience, which would suggest that preserving that life specifically is not moral.
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May 24, 2015 22:04
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Disinterested posted:living itself doesn't have to be inherently good, but dying does exclude the possibility of good in most cases Yes it does, but by that logic, we all have a moral imperative to reproduce constantly because the ensuing lives might be good. Preserving or creating life in the hope that it will be happy, despite evidence to the contrary, would seem to be fairly severe optimism bias. Especially as access to medically assisted suicide and promoting better access to mental health facilities and economic assistance aren't exclusive. Opposing the former isn't a necessary part of supporting the latter, hence my dispute. Dying excludes the possibility of a good life but also excludes the possibility of a bad one.
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May 24, 2015 22:09
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Disinterested posted:No it doesn't. Non-existent people can't have rights, just like they can't do or experience the good if they kill themselves. I'm a little lost there, not sure what the legal status of the unborn has to do with it? The argument I was making was moral. Disinterested posted:Can we come up with new terminology for assisted suicide for the mentally ill because it clouds the issue. Sure if you like, I don't draw much of a distinction because I don't feel it necessary for the purposes of this discussion. I will grant that it is quite possible for the suicidal party to not act reasonably, but I would still advocate against absolute legal prohibition of assisted suicide because I don't believe that the law is capable of making a good decision about whether they're acting reasonably. I would suggest that the person best equipped to judge whether or not the decision is correct, is the person it would affect. They aren't infallible, but I think they are less fallible than a blunt law, and there are much better legal options out there to reduce the likelihood of the decision being incorrect, such as waiting periods, or possibly counseling.
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May 24, 2015 22:21
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Disinterested posted:Rights are a moral as well as a legal category. I would argue that rights should follow from moral principles, so a moral argument should determine what rights people ought to have, especially in the case of a proposed right that isn't legally established. Disinterested posted:I do because I believe there are obvious qualitative differences. People who are already going to die proximately, as a result of no external act, without the possibility that this situation can be reversed quite clearly occupy a separate category. It's true that if people are proximately about to die that makes the question easier by removing the "potentially may lead a good life" argument but as I don't agree with that argument to begin with, I don't see it as a necessary distinction. You can draw one certainly but I don't feel the need to. Disinterested posted:I absolutely believe that almost anyone is a better judge of what is best for an individual than a severely delusional mentally ill person. The law is, in fact, not awful at doing this kind of thing in other situations. In any event, the 'law' doesn't have agency really, either a doctor, official, or family member does, usually as a result of special knowledge, skills, or knowledge of the individual in question. Doesn't that sort of... fall apart when you define "delusional and mentally ill" as "wants to take their own life without me understanding why" ? They can't make the right decision because they're mad, they're mad because they made the wrong decision. It seems a bit circular?
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May 24, 2015 22:47
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Disinterested posted:Yes - but what has that got to do with anything? You are saying what rights people ought to have, I am saying that the status of non-conceived children is that they are not people at all, and therefore not capable of having a moral right. I invoked the law at precisely no point in the argument, so I just think you are not following what I am saying and should start over with this thread. I am a little lost then because I don't see the distinction between the unborn and the happy future of a living person. Both deal with things that exist entirely hypothetically. There is absolutely no guarantee that a person's life will improve with time, and even less guarantee that it will improved markedly enough that they will feel that it merits the difficulty of living. If you advocate for the preservation of life in the hopes that it will lead to hypothetical happy life later on, why not the same for birth? That is why I disagree with the notion that "they might be happy in the future" is a good argument, especially as this is a discussion about the legality of assisted suicide. Legalising assisted suicide says absolutely nothing about efforts to make it unneccesary, just as banning it does not do so either. The sole exception I would make to this is that by making suicide difficult, it makes it much easier to pretend that it isn't a problem. As has been demonstrated, people think suicide is tragic, but it isn't. What's tragic is what lead to the suicide. The death itself is much better than the person continuing to suffer, surely? It is not an ideal solution, but it may be the only option the person has available. I advocate the provision of care to those who need it, but I disagree that it is necessary to, with the other hand, prevent people from seeking a peaceful death. If access to medically assisted suicide lead to an increased rate of suicide, that should be seen as a challenge to provide better alternatives. The response to that challenge should not be to push suicide under the rug by making it harder to do, and necessitating people committing it in manners which are violent and/or harmful to others. Try to make it so that people may, perhaps, have a better life, but don't take away their option to end their life if they don't have an alternative. Zaradis posted:I can play that game too. Since the majority of people would be happier if they didn't have the obstacles presented by minority opinions in the way of achieving their social and political goals, it is a morally right action to kill any and all people who do not agree with the political opinion of the majority. I'm not sure if I would be a utilitarian or an existentialist in that argument given that I always thought I would be both.
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May 24, 2015 23:26
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Disinterested posted:One of them is alive. But neither of them exist. The supposed happy futures, that is. Both exist in-potentia. One is simply slightly more in-potentia because the person isn't alive yet either. But neither one are real things that you should act as if they are certain.
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May 24, 2015 23:31
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Disinterested posted:That isn't the relevant qualifying condition, but even if it were, the potential future of non-existent persons it's definitely qualitatively different given how far removed it is, so as to render the distinction easy enough to me. So, you're arguing it is less likely for any given unborn child to have a happy life, than it is for any given depressed person? It is less likely for a blank slate to be happy, than it is for a person who has a proven history of being unhappy? If you're of the view that potential happy futures are something worth preserving unhappy lives for, then surely you should be more in favor of having children in the random hope they become happy? This argument is farcical obviously but the reason I'm making it is because so is the premise. Potential future happiness is not a rational basis for making an argument, it's unfounded optimism.
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May 24, 2015 23:34
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Disinterested posted:No, I'm arguing that the in-potentia happiness of children not conceived is simply not worthy of consideration because it's laughably remote from reality. How is it possibly more removed from reality than that of someone who is chronically depressed? Most people can produce a child just by loving a lot, making someone who has an established past full of misery and an established situation perpetuating their misery, not miserable any more, is much harder than that.
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May 24, 2015 23:38
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I guess, it doesn't seem to be illustrating the point very well to you.
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May 24, 2015 23:43
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Disinterested posted:Do you support the right to suicide, let alone assisted suicide, of persons with an observable and correctable physical defect of mind, such as some sort of hypothetical physical damage of the brain that happened to give rise to depressive feelings, correctable through surgery? Yes. Is the surgery physically available? Is the surgery affordable for the person? Is the person likely to be made aware of the availability of the surgery? Is the person likely to be accepted for the surgery if all of the above are true? Is the surgery certain to fix the problem? If all of the above are yes, then I would suggest that the person would choose the surgery of their own volition. And thus I support their right to suicide, and hope that they elect not to utilize it. I would also suggest that it is unlikely that all of the above would be true, and that it is unlikely that the person would be presented with that option to begin with. Mental healthcare is critically under-available in many places, and even where it is physically available, it is often not practically available. In the context of discussing laws governing assisted suicide, unless you are proposing to make up for that deficit, banning assisted suicide on the basis of better alternatives being available is based on an erroneous premise. Hypothetically, there are better alternatives. Practically? There often aren't. Provide alternatives and suicide won't be necessary, and you should have little to fear from legalizing assisted suicide. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:43 on May 25, 2015 |
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May 25, 2015 00:09
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If the body is a deterministic machine, how can one choose to act in a non-deterministic manner? Even if the mind were somehow free of determinism, that would simply result in you being unable to affect your actions, despite being aware of it. As I assume most people don't go about screaming inside their head because their body is uncontrollable, then either the mind must be deterministic or the body non-deterministic.
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May 25, 2015 02:03
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rudatron posted:But you can use that same argument to argue that drinking alcohol turns you into a different person. Should people therefore not drink? It depends on when you believe a person is seriously different. It's an interesting discussion, but not one that's relevant here. People should have the right to choose whether they drink or not.
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May 25, 2015 05:02
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The issue I take with that view is that it makes a pathological pursuit of life extension a requirement of mental health. Which only makes sense if you assume that more life is always good and we have a moral obligation to pursue it. Which I would disagree with, as would society in general.
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May 26, 2015 02:10
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unwantedplatypus posted:There's a difference between pursuit of life extension and pursuit of life termination. The former implies not letting yourself die whereas the latter is actively seeking your own death. I would say stopping the pursuit of life termination is a requirement of mental health. That's an odd distinction to draw, because what you're essentially arguing is that there is nothing wrong with either state, but there is something wrong with actively choosing one of them. Either death is to be avoided inherently, or it is not. If it is not, then choosing it is not insane. Unless you're trying to appeal to nature, there isn't a meaningful distinction to be drawn between allowing yourself to die and choosing to die. One is not better simply because it is done passively, capitalizing on an external influence. It doesn't become acceptable to die only at the point when you can do it without actively participating in it.
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May 26, 2015 14:56
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asdf32 posted:You can't make judgement like mentally ill without a base set of assumptions about human behavior and reason alone isn't there to help you out. In a purely abstract sense for example there is no basis to judge a serial killer to be mentally ill without deciding beforehand that humans should value the lives of other humans. It's not a leap to extend this to people's value of their own life. Except we make that exception already in a great many ways. Many things are acceptable to do to yourself but not to others. The reason you don't kill people is because it is generally (accurately) assumed the other person does not give consent for you to do so. The entire subject of assisted suicide requires you to cede that consent is important. Not the actual act of killing someone. People should value the autonomy of other humans, theft, rape, and murder are wrong, but charity, sex, and assisted suicide are not. The operative difference is that the person must consent, because the moral principle is that people should have autonomy over their life as much as possible. Bodily autonomy is probably the most fundamental part of this, in that a person should have control over their own body, which informs almost all our social rules. A person is considered to deserve freedom over what they eat, whether they seek treatment for sickness, whether they engage in body modification, and who they are intimate with. It is the moral basis for the human rights to healthcare, food, and shelter, we should be able to choose to keep our bodies as we wish to, and not be sick, hungry, or cold unless we want to be. But that does not extend as far as death?
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May 27, 2015 04:56
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It's often used by people who argue for greater freedom for them at the expense of everybody else, so it's an understandable aversion. But securing greater human autonomy, not greater personal autonomy is an extremely sound basis for a moral system.
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May 27, 2015 07:38
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asdf32 posted:No you drifted off the point. Consent or not consent has to do with other people's freedom but has nothing to do with mental illness. The question is whether you determine that somone who serially kills other humans is mentally ill, or whether the ranting lunatic in the street is mentally ill or whether you determine that somone who is suicidal is mentally ill. Then all that does is render a mental illness diagnosis less meaningful. It should not exist for the purpose of denying people the freedom to act in a way that does not harm others. Unless we want to put homosexuality back in the DSM. Self centeredness is not a requirement for individual wellbeing nor social wellbeing. Mental illness diagnoses should be used to further the interests of the diagnosed, and nothing more, they are meaningless otherwise. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:37 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 03:32
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No, because libertarians are idiots with no understanding of the concept of freedom, they want anarchy, political freedom and are willing to give up the material freedom of everyone else on the planet to do so. Mental illness is (or should be) a term to describe patterns of thought which are detrimental to the health and happiness of an individual, as determined by the individual. It should not be an absolute standard to which everybody is held, what causes distress for some may not do so for others, what some desire treatment for, others may not. Keeping a track of known patterns of detrimental thought is useful for helping those who want treatment for their condition, but it should not be used as a description of the objective ideal human, and diagnoses should not be used to take away the right to self determination of others.
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May 28, 2015 03:47
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No you don't, if someone is unhappy with their life and comes to you for treatment, diagnose their problem and treat it. If they don't, let them get on with it. In the event they are a danger to others, you don't need a mental illness diagnosis to deal with that. If they aren't a danger to others, again, let them get on with it. It's their life.
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May 28, 2015 04:22
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Ravenfood posted:If someone finds their depression so onerous that they wish to kill themselves, aren't they, by your definition, determining that their patterns of thought are detrimental to their health and happiness? Possibly, but it's still up to them to decide how to deal with that, I think. Make available all the treatments and assistance you can, educate people that therapy and shelter is available if they want it, but it should still be up to the person to decide how they want to deal with it. If you have to force people not to kill themselves, it suggests more to me that you're doing a piss poor job of providing alternatives, and forcing people not to kill themselves is not going to do anything to improve that. I think the number of people who would choose death in the face of effective and available alternatives are few and far between.
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May 28, 2015 04:28
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asdf32 posted:And you just argued away your basis for determining their problem. Why? If someone seeks treatment they should have it, if they don't believe they need treatment they don't get it? That's not that bizzare, it's how a lot of mental health services work where I live, for the most part. If you don't want treatment or don't want a specific thing treated you're left to get on with it. You're expected to decide for yourself what you want out of the facilities available.
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May 28, 2015 04:31
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asdf32 posted:Then it's a catch 22 if your mental illness takes a form where you claim to not want treatment. And that's not uncommon at all. And that's fine? If you don't want treatment don't have it? Again so long as you're not a danger to others I don't see the problem with that? If someone's functional enough to live without treatment for a condition they expressly wish not to be treated for, I'm not sure in that situation we should start sectioning people because we think we know better. That seems like it would do more harm than good.
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May 28, 2015 04:39
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I mean functional enough to live the life they've chosen, as in, if someone wants to live and can live without treatment. If someone wants to live without treatment but can't and ends up in hospital, or simply can't express an opinion either way any of the time, give them treatment on the assumption they would want it. Unless they have explicitly refused it, in which case you shouldn't, as with a DNR. If they don't want to live then that's up to them, isn't it?
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May 28, 2015 04:57
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Bifner McDoogle posted:How the heck do you define 'living' here? A guy with PTSD that is dangerously unstable is living and there is no guarantee that they'll act out violently, but they definitely need treatment even if they think they know better. Was John Nash 'living'? He revolutionized game theory so it's had to say he wasn't functioning on some level but at the same time people surrounding him understood he needed help more than he did. Does someone with mild epilepsy who only suffers 2 or 3 seizures a year, who decides not to take anticonvulsant medication due to the side effects (which are really horrible, trust me) but doesn't grasp that each seizure could stop thier heart or rewire thier personality or worse really know better than those prescribing the medication? These aren't gotcha questions, they're something we need to consider and simple axioms are not going to cut it. So long as the person isn't going to pose a risk to others, it should be up to them whether they seek treatment or not. PTSD doesn't automatically result in violence but I was under the impression that it can be unpredictable enough to result in it sometimes, that would be a case where confinement for the safety of others could be supported. For the benefit of the sufferer however, you should respect their decision. The epileptic is entirely within their right to refuse treatment because they don't like the side effects, they shouldn't be allowed to say, drive a car while doing so because then they pose a risk to others, but if they consider the side effects worse than the risks of the seizure, so be it. Whether you agree with them or not isn't relevant, it's their decision, you don't share the same values and what is important to you is likely not as important to them.
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May 28, 2015 17:04
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Certainly consent should be informed where possible, part of going to a doctor to investigate epilepsy (or any other condition) should include information about the condition and how to manage it with or without treatment. But in the event someone isn't well informed about their condition, I don't think it's appropriate to ignore their wishes as a result. Especially as they may still come to the "wrong" conclusion even with information, due to a difference in values. Make information as available as you can, but also accept that not everyone will necessarily make use of it. Which again is fine so long as the consequences affect them, rather than others. I fully accept that this won't produce optimal outcomes all the time, in fact it's probably never going to produce an entirely optimal outcome. The ideal of course would be that we would have an absolute authority which can accurately decide what is best for everybody and give them it so that nobody complains, but as we're a long way from that, even a long way from being able to accurately guess at what is best for others who are dealing with complex and difficult situations, the best thing to do, I think, is to make as much help, information, and support available as you can, and then let people choose. The choice is important, people have to make decisions for themselves, and we have to trust that they are making the best one they can, and not remove their choice when we disagree with it, because it offends our sensibilities. The choice isn't for our benefit, it's for the benefit of the person affected by it. I think that approach is the best way to avoid things like declaring trans people insane, the help you give should adapt to the needs of the person, as they express it, it shouldn't be there to make people conform with what is socially or personally acceptable to the person in charge of administering the help. Swapping stories, I have a relative who is, bluntly, quite mad. She functions but it's quite clear that she isn't happy or healthy and likely never has been. I would like to see her treated and her life improved but she won't consent to it. I could try to have her sectioned but that wouldn't help either, it would take what little happiness she does manage to draw from life away, and she would resist every step of the way. In theory she is treatable but in practice, nobody would possibly be able to find out exactly how to best do so. So all I can do is respect her wishes, offer what help I can, and let her get on with it. It isn't optimal, but I do think it's the best of a bad lot. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:10 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 19:02
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Their agency is in jeopardy if they do not want to live as they are. And as before, I support the provision of as much aid as possible to people who want to change their life, because self determination is important. The role of care providers should not be to say "go for it" but to say "we have alternatives we can offer, but we won't force you to take them" If someone with no prior predisposition to suicide gets drunk and behaves recklessly, yes, they should be prevented from injuring themselves, because there is a fairly established personality there which is obviously in contradiction to their current behavior, "they" don't want to die, as in, the person they are 90% of the time doesn't, so that person should have their wishes honored. There is a difference between that and somebody whose whole, long term personality is depressive. I have that problem myself, as does some of my family. Either you have to argue that a depressive person is not a legitimate person, because their outlook is not sufficiently optimistic, and they need to be changed into something more acceptable, or you have to acknowledge that a depressive person has a right to self determination as well. If your judgement consistently functions in a particular way, it's difficult to describe it as "impaired" or to view that judgement and associated personality as illegitimate. Do you do so because the judgement doesn't correlate with your own? Most people's judgement will not. Do you do it because it isn't reasonable? Most people's judgement is not. Do you do it because it sometimes produces results you find impossible to conscience? Often the case with many people. Unless you plan to lock people up in general for making judgements based on ideology or faith, or for making judgements you don't like, I'm not sure how you can justify delegitimising a person on the basis that their personal judgement isn't to your liking. Whether or not you once held similar views in the past and now intensely oppose them doesn't signify, I don't think. I don't oppose you seeking treatment despite it being something I personally would much prefer to avoid, but it is your decision, and that's important. Hence why I favor permissiveness. Medication works for some, therapy for others, neither work for still others, and, while it may not be my choice, suicide most certainly solves problems for the people who choose it. That people may choose it challenges us to be better, to provide other options, as I very much doubt it would be anybody's first option. But if someone is driven to it, has exhausted everything else they have available to them, and still chooses death, how on earth do I turn round and say, always, until moments before their death cannot be prevented: "no you can't do that because I don't think you've tried hard enough at the other alternatives/because I don't believe you can think straight" As before, offer alternatives you think are better, don't legislate against the ones you don't like. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:08 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 19:55
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Then in your position I would suggest that something to do under a system which is permissive about assisted suicide would be to, during a point when you are the person you feel is 'you', register with your doctor that you don't want to be considered for assisted suicide. Personally I don't tend to swing much so my intuitive understanding is of a rather more unwaveringly grim outlook. We already allow things like that, least over here, you can go to the pharmacy/doctor and ask them to make sure that you cannot be prescribed particular medications. For the same reason I would support the idea of a waiting period for any sort of assisted suicide, I agree with you that it shouldn't be a momentary decision, and needs to be considered. The point of my argument isn't to make depressed people kill themselves, it's to recognise that banning humane and managed suicide doesn't improve access to other healthcare, that it is only going to drive people to more violent, unreliable, and dangerous-to-others methods. I don't think it's necessary to stuff suicide under the rug in order to support better care for the unwell. I would argue it's actively counterproductive to do so. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:20 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 20:13
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I might also venture that there is a slight element of selection bias in play. As in, people who think suicide is/was the right and rational option, don't tend to speak about it after the fact.
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May 28, 2015 20:47
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| # ¿ Jun 2, 2024 05:45 |
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I wouldn't oppose a temporary intervention, my objection would be to the repeatability of such. If someone seeks to end their life in a peaceful way, and is committed to doing so regardless of being given time to think about it, they should be allowed to do so, and not locked up because of it, either indefinitely, or repeatedly.
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May 28, 2015 22:02
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