> And even if euthanasia is just that – and Twitter is very proud to toot its horn as the sensitive and sensible, woke platform that clamps down on promotion and encouragement of self-harm, including its ultimate form, suicide – the tweet, even though it opposed it, got banned.
This is such an interesting topic, because while euthanasia can be considered a way of suicide, advocating against it can also be considered advocating for painful suicide (since some patients will still suicide, just in a much worse way).
Note that the bar for euthanasia is incredibly difficult - and it should be - in most countries that allow it. A draft to make it legal was approved recently in my home country, Spain, and to apply it you need to do:
Prequisite: have a severe incurable illness.
1. Day 0. First written application.
2. Day 2. Doctor discusses with patient the diagnosis, treatments and their results, and other kind of alternatives.
3. Day 15. Second written application.
4. Day 17. Same as 2, Doctor discusses with patient the diagnosis, treatments and their results, and other kind of alternatives.
5. Day 17. Ask if the patient wants to follow up.
6. Day 27. Doctor consults with a different kind of doctor to approve situation.
7. Day 30. The president of "guarantee and evaluation" of the "state" has to be made aware of this.
8. Day 32. The president designates a doctor and lawyer to verify everything is okay.
9. Day 39. These new doctor + layer present their report.
10. Day 39. The patient signs and chooses modality of death (they can self-administer the substance or have it administer by a nurse).
Note: days here point some times the shortest possible dates, e.g. Day 15 is actually "from 15 days since Day 0" and some times to the longest available "up to 2 days since Day 0".
I had a long and interesting conversation with my father about this. He's retired now, but was a family lawyer (solicitor in the UK). He is vehemently opposed to euthanasia purely on the grounds of his experiences with ailing/aging parents and greedy children - he's had clients tidy up their wills, often with their children looking over their shoulders, and then kill themselves to stop "being a burden" on their families. He thinks if euthanasia is legal then this will become more common, no matter the procedural hurdles put in place ("come on Mum, we better get these forms signed before you get more senile and can't sign them. You don't want to be a burden on all of us, do you?").
I'm very much pro-euthanasia, because I don't plan on having any kids and consider the worst of all possible deaths to be gradually losing my mind in assisted housing (well, being eaten by a wild animal holds more terror for me, but the other one is close). Obviously I don't know how enthusiastic I'll be when the time actually comes, but I'm in my 50's and the thought of slipping away painlessly when I think the time is right holds no fear for me at the moment.
Religion also plays a part - I'm atheist and so not afraid of losing my place in valhalla because of suicide. Dad's an intellectual Anglican and so suicide is morally less acceptable for him. But this didn't come into the discussion much - he genuinely fears for the consequences if greedy children are allowed to persuade their parents to kill themselves.
This might not advance the state of the discussion any further, but have you and/or your father had the chance to see the film "Knives Out"? It's a mystery/dark comedy, and explores somewhat-related ideas in a good-natured way.
Hm. How does this work? Isn't the lawyers (and/or notaries) supposed to establish that the person making the will understands its content? How does suicide/euthanasia factor into this at all? If the aging/ailing person feels pressured by their descendants, how does living longer would help them? If they are capable of making/expressing their will aren't they capable of not taking euthanasia? On the other hand if they are incapable of signing a will they are also incapable of requesting euthanasia, right?
And even if we simply leave the will part out of this, if they are pressured by "loved ones" to end it with dignity, and they agree, who are we to disagree? If they don't agree then it's a crime to harass someone to death (whatever the method).
What am I missing? Could you explain your father's argument? Thanks!
> if they are pressured by "loved ones" to end it with dignity, and they agree, who are we to disagree?
Well, my Dad for one ;) Family dynamics can get very ugly. If a family is emotionally manipulating any of its members into committing suicide, he feels that is wrong. I tend to agree, this feels wrong to me, even if everyone involved is saying that they're happy with it.
At the moment, all of this behaviour is legal, right up until the parent commits suicide. There's nothing the lawyer can do because there's no expressed intention to commit suicide (just the repeated "I don't want to be a burden" I guess - I'm never witnessed this myself). I think we could incorporate language into a Euthanasia bill to cope with this situation better than it is currently, but Dad disagrees, citing his experience of how manipulative families can get.
To summarise his view: families can be evil to each other. Some families already manipulate aging parents into suicide, which is wrong and should be opposed. Making assisted suicide legal and giving it a framework will encourage it, and any procedural hurdles won't stop that.
Ah, okay, thanks for the explanation. Yeah, I understand this argument. Emotional abuse, exploitation of vulnerable groups (from elderly, minors, to folks with disabilities, homeless, unemployed, persecuted minorities, etc. etc, alas the list goes on for long) is already a problem, and in many jurisdictions it's already pushed back against.
I think protective care would help more if it were independent of euthanasia, because it would mean that if the manipulated relatives find out they have been manipulated and then change their minds about euthanasia then they don't have to go back to their manipulative relatives. (Duh, I know, but this catch-22 problem is very endemic in a lot of public "safety net" setups.)
> Making assisted suicide legal and giving it a framework will encourage it, and any procedural hurdles won't stop that.
It meaning manipulating others into it? Yes, that's probably tautologically true. But, that's the plan, to make it easier anyway, as it should decrease suicides, and even more importantly it should decrease time spent in misery and suffering. (And as I mentioned pushing back against exploitation should be a priority anyway.)
The offending tweet was arguing against all forms of suicide, assisted or otherwise. I'm trying to understand your point charitably, but it escapes me how arguing against suicide could be interpreted as arguing for suicide. I understand that there's a consequentialist argument ("it is going to happen anyway"), but that seems to accept something as inevitable which is not.
Going against legal abortion yields more illegal abortions.
Going against legal alcohol yields more illegal alcohol.
Going against legal X yields more illegal X.
Same concept, going against legal suicide (euthanasia) yields more suicides. Sure overall the number of suicides might go down, maybe even very noticeable, but the quality of care would suffer tremendously. I'm not arguing on suicide vs suicide, but on the quality of it.
I believe it's better if N people decide to end their lifes consciously, surrounded by loved ones in a medical facility painlessly than if M people commit suicide alone and ashamed at home.
There are so many things wrong with this reasoning, it's kind of hard to know where to start:
1. Take 'Going against legal X yields more illegal X': This is a meaningless statement. For example, going against legal murder yields more illegal murder. It is a non-statement, tautological.
2. Take a revised and more debatable statement: 'Going against legal X yields more X' (much rarer, but possible, for example cocaine proliferation brought about by prohibiting less damaging drugs). This deserves careful consideration. Do our laws assume from the outset the required enforcement to enable their utility? In some ways yes, in other ways no (for example, our laws shouldn't need to take into account politically motivated lack of enforcement).
3. Even if we say that a particular law leads to _more_ of the exact averse outcome and the legislature should have known the challenges of enforcement - illegal drugs being a good example of this, or illegal immigration, it _still_ doesn't follow in all cases that the answer is to decriminalize. A debate must be had, for sure - and some change is required, but that change may be subtle, enabling better enforcement for example.
However, your above logic as it stands is essentially an argument for anarchism, though I'm not sure you intended it that way.
Probably the strongest form of the "going against legal X leads to illegal X" is that "if society doesn't address the causes that make people want X and just makes it a criminal offence, we'll still see a lot of X, plus we'll have a lot of folks in prison".
For example with murder we have many cases of vigilantism, the cause was a broken police/justice system.
Every kind of substance crime? War on Substances! And it's a total failure.
"Tough on X" ("enforcement") sounds good, but our whole history is about how tough never really works. (Law and order, machismo, denying and ignoring real causes, and putting on a big show about the effect, those are the magic ingredients to totalitarianism.)
Yes, it is in a vacuum. But in the discussed case, if you penalize posting only about the ilegal version, then an assymetry is created where going against X (and thus inciting illegal X) gets filtered through a censor lens where you only see "inciting illegal X".
Anyway I'm not saying I agree, just that this could be the reasoning behind saying that the tweet promoted harmful suicides.
I think because euthanasia is someone else kills you, not assists with suicide, OP used euthanasia, the Irish Bishop's specific tweet used 'assisted suicide' and the story headline used 'euthanasia'
I have no idea if the church considers euthanasia, suicide or murder or both. A lot of people would not consider euthanasia suicide since someone else is agreeing you can die and doing it for you. If you can't legally get euthanasia you might have to suicide early before incapacitation.
In Belgium we were one of the earlies to approve it and I think it depends on ones condition (If you're guaranteed dead due to the likes of cancer it changes i think) but I think generally it needs to be judged by a panel of doctors and the person needs to have some consults with a psychiatrist and all in all there needs to be no alternatives for a good life.
You won't get approved if you're just depressed.
In The Netherlands there's the possibility for severe cases of depression, too. "Uitzichtloos lijden" (irremediable suffering ) is the magic phrase, and there is the fear that it could lead to older people deciding to euthanize when living conditions in homes for the elderly would be worsening. Not that that's bound to happen soon, but imagine not being able to tweet about it...
I think "Uitzichtloos lijden" is a term more emotionally powerful than "irremediable suffering" makes it seem. Maybe not legally, but in terms of what it conveys.
"Uitzicht" is your view on the future. "Uitzichtloos" means your future is empty, have nothing to look forward to. As an adverb for suffering ("lijden") it conveys nothing but endless suffering, without future, without hope.
Advocating for euthanasia is advocating for the government to force doctors to take someone’s life even against the doctor’s will. It’s an interesting form of violence.
No it isn't. It's advocating for removing penalities for ending someone's life in certain specific circumstances. Whether doctors make that choice will be up to them.
This is such an interesting topic, because while euthanasia can be considered a way of suicide, advocating against it can also be considered advocating for painful suicide (since some patients will still suicide, just in a much worse way).
Note that the bar for euthanasia is incredibly difficult - and it should be - in most countries that allow it. A draft to make it legal was approved recently in my home country, Spain, and to apply it you need to do:
Prequisite: have a severe incurable illness.
1. Day 0. First written application.
2. Day 2. Doctor discusses with patient the diagnosis, treatments and their results, and other kind of alternatives.
3. Day 15. Second written application.
4. Day 17. Same as 2, Doctor discusses with patient the diagnosis, treatments and their results, and other kind of alternatives.
5. Day 17. Ask if the patient wants to follow up.
6. Day 27. Doctor consults with a different kind of doctor to approve situation.
7. Day 30. The president of "guarantee and evaluation" of the "state" has to be made aware of this.
8. Day 32. The president designates a doctor and lawyer to verify everything is okay.
9. Day 39. These new doctor + layer present their report.
10. Day 39. The patient signs and chooses modality of death (they can self-administer the substance or have it administer by a nurse).
Note: days here point some times the shortest possible dates, e.g. Day 15 is actually "from 15 days since Day 0" and some times to the longest available "up to 2 days since Day 0".