Hot-take: It should be open to any adult for any reason they choose.
People are forced into the world without any choice. They should have the choice to leave it peacefully when they want.
The problem is allowing the government control over that.
what, ? that’s what this article is about, The Canadian Government is asserting control over Canadian citizens choice.
The problem with unlimited use is that the government can kill dissenters and say they wanted it.
Or more likely given our current government, they can kill indigenous people.
Not really. Anyone can comitt suicide if they want to. This is about providing someone with medical expertise to do it for them.
I don’t think this is as hot of a take as you may imagine. However, I think that the implementation is the tricky part.
If you think about it, anyone can try to die by suicide at any time they want, and there’s really very little others can do about it. There’s a thousand and one grim ways to accomplish it. In a way, providing people who really want to do it with a safe and effective process to accomplish it is, in my opinion, kind of humane.
That said, what is the safe and effective process? Who determines what is safe and effective? Personally, I’d like doctors involved, but most doctors (any one that I want to trust, at least) have taken an oath to do no harm, and they tend to take that pretty seriously. Is the government going to force doctors to perform euthanasia for anyone at all who wants it? That hardly seems like a good idea.
So the hows and whys are a bit trickier once you start digging into them, in my opinion. For context, I’ve dealt with major depression in the past and have spent (a short) time in a psychiatric ward after an attempt. I’m kind of sympathetic to both sides on this issue.
Idk why there is a debate on a safe and effective way to kill someone. Its inert gas asphyxiation every time. As a welder, its been a threat my entire career. Its scary because its so easy. You go to work, you get a little tired, you doze off, and you die. Thats it. Your body has no way to tell the difference between oxygen, nitrogen, and argon.
Gas chamber scare quotes
A charity run clinic where patients have safe access to buy and self-administer gas? (Obviously no walk ins, ffs)
Add an option to buy a cremation too, with a discount if you don’t care about cremains and don’t mind being part of a bulk lot, and this would be perfect, no?
Those who can’t afford these services but still require them should be comped using donations and the fees of those who can.
Honestly, I think having a safe and painless option for death available for when you eventually decide you need it, is something I think the majority of rational people will end up supporting, so I doubt a charity of this sort would be short on donations either.
Kind of goes against the entire point of medicine and being a doctor if you just make it part of the field to facilitate people killing themselves for any reason they want to. MAID exists for a reason. People who want to kill themselves because of mental illness are sick and the therapy is not to let them do it. It is different when people are in pain and actively dying.
Absolutely. I e said this a few times, but what right does the govt have to tell me I HAVE to live. I don’t give a fuck if I’m not dying. If I want to die, what right does the government have to force me to live.
It’s not like I woke up one day and was like “oh shit I wanna die!” I’ve never wanted to be alive. But assisted dying is not available here and I e attempted suicide so much myself thst I have a abi now.
No one should be forced to survive.
If you think that physical health is the only indicator of quality of life then you have no idea how mental health works.
Its my damn switch, I should be able to switch it off when I want.
You just need to eat well and do yoga and meditation, right? It’s just in your head, so cheer up!
/s, lifelong depression here
Your sarcasm was plenty clear without the “s”, FYI.
This is cruel.
No? Good on them for barring mental illness as a sole reason.
I live with Persistent Depressive Disorder and it’s admittedly been frustrating seeing people essentially telling people like myself that we should do the thing we’re unhealthily telling ourselves to do anyways.
It literally comes off as people trying to tell me I’m lesser than and should kill myself, but with the veneer of continuing to look progressive.
I have my own struggles.
I have attempted twice on my own.
I don’t currently have a desire to.
But removing a dignified and personally chosen means of exiting leaves only the other, more messy ways.
Personally, i believe this option should be available to everyone for any reason.
If our gun laws here were like those in the states, I truly would not be here right now.
The same would be of MAID if it was supplied for those with mental illnesses.
It is insane to me that people are just casually blowing this off as if it means nothing. You have no room to regret a permanent decision, and no hope to hold out on.
If my attempts were successful I would have never found myself in this spot where yes, things are still rough, but I can at least say it’s better. I’d have never predicted where things would have gone ten years ago when I was still depressed and feeling suicidal then, by giving people the option to do this, you rob them of the potential for a better life forever.
There’s a guy in our town with no arms or legs. Gets around on a skateboard. Shot himself in the woods during winter but was found and given medical attention. But not before he lost all 4 limbs to frostbite. I’ve never spoken to him. Seems to have a pretty positive disposition given his circumstances.
Also have a bro whose gf slit her wrists in the tub. She survived. Hella trauma all around. Still on the waiting list for surgery to fix her hands years later.
Had a total karen of a neighbour once…Hard not to be callous cuz she was genuinely unpleasant to interact with but found out from my roommate that several years back she came home and found her son had hung himself in the closet at like 17. Who knows if she was nicer back then but clearly permafucked her mentally. She didn’t even move out. She kept living there.
Dying peacefully via MAID is certainly less traumatic to everyone else.
Theyre not yelling at you to go out the door by leaving it open.
Theyre shutting the door on others from being able to choose.
Sound like a typical conservative. Only your choice matters. :/
“Let’s not change the system as it stands, lets just get rid of minorities and people facing minority issues, and the system fixes itself!”
Idk man, that sounds eerily similar to fascism. Just because it’s sugar-coated as being an “option” (which benefits them because they can no longer be held accountable for their poor decisions) doesn’t make it any better.
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Go protest a-
I attend protests regularly and am actively engaged in civil change programs and organisations.
Debilitatingly mentally ill and/or neurologically different
So like me, who has autism, ADHD, Persistent Depressive Disorder, has been denied a Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis by my doctor out of fears of stigma, has CPTSD, etc.
shitty people like you
At no point did I name-call anybody else. Funny how someone with mental and neurological disorders gets told to “fuck off” and is called a “shitty person” when their view differs from other people with mental disorders, almost like we don’t have the capacity to think straight and rationally a lot of the time and shouldn’t be making such a decision like this when we have provably treatable conditions.
“It’ll obviously lead to eugenics because why stop there”. Persistent Depressive Disorder is treatable and requires that you stay in a depressive state for at least two years to be diagnosed. A MAID assessment is 90 days. See the issue here? People could be given the wrong treatment options because they’re thought to have the wrong conditions and can decide that they want to end their life when other treatment options and diagnoses could be in play. This process can be complicated when you’re neurodiverse. A “choice” forced on you by society and systemic injustice is not really a choice, hence why I do call it eugenics. We don’t have to literally be brought into pens like cattle for it to be eugenics, all it takes is for us to be considered undesirable, which is already the case among a lot of people, and for the government to take improving our lives off the table as an option, replacing things with “deal with it, or die”.
Your argument is basically “people worse off than you shouldn’t have to do xyz for change because reasons”. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had it pretty bad so don’t come here playing these nonsense games of name-calling if your end goal is “but I’ve had it worse than you, therefore I’m right”
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I never said I recovered. The hell is your problem? You come over here claiming to speak on behalf of people with mental disorders, and then when I come out and say “hey, here’s what I suffer with”, you make a point to mock my depression calling it “big sad” and putting words in my mouth stating that I’m claiming everyone else has a “skill issue”.
The only issue here is your behaviour. I’m not taking anything you say seriously from this point on out because how am I supposed to trust that you’re supposedly speaking on behalf of people like myself when you throw them under the bus the second you get the opportunity to over a disagreement.
At no point did I call anybody here any names, and yet hilariously I’m being made out to be the bad guy because I have a differing opinion. Get the hell out of here with this disrespect and never claim to speak on behalf of people with any disorder ever again.
Thank you for your comments on this post, it echos many of my own thoughts on the situation.
How?
Edit: so no answers?
Not them, but I think part of it that will be cruel is that the proper supports and services are not in place for some people with mental illness to have an adequate life and so people who would have chosen to ‘escape’ this destiny via MAID will instead be forced to find their own exit or live in that inadequate condition.
I would vastly prefer a system with such support and aide that they would never be a factor in choosing MAID, but we do not have that as far as I can tell.
I am not sure where I stand on this issue because I do not know enough about it yet.
I don’t think there’s a simple one-size-fits-all answer for everyone here.
What the majority of people with mental illness need is better treatment options. That they don’t have to pay for out-of-pocket because the government doesn’t fund it, or travel for hours in order to access. Fixing this is, to be honest, more important than extending MAID beyond serious physical conditions at the moment, and would help more people. But it’s expensive and difficult.
On the gripping hand, there is such a thing as treatment-resistant mental illness. If someone has tried everything, and nothing works, and there are no new treatments on the horizon, then denying them the only relief possible is cruel. This small percentage of mentally ill people should be permitted access to MAID, after due consideration of their medical history.
So the mentally ill are forced to suffer because of somebody’s saviour complex… There are checks and balances in the system. The plan was to not just kill whoever walked through the door. Guess what? Not one life will be saved every person whether they are blessed with a compassionate death or not will die. NOBODY IS GETTING OUT ALIVE. What we are talking about is how much we are willing to let you suffer as you die.
The issue with this is that we have MAID because of the courts, not because it was legislated. This will certainly be taken to court and based on previous rulings has a very high chance of being deemed unconstitutional.
Being suicidal exempting people from access to safe suicide is so morbidly ironic, it’s not even funny.
The risk of fucking up a home suicide and surviving, brain damaged to the point where you’re conscious enough to be aware of things but not to have agency, so you end up locked away for the rest of your natural life in a government funded ward, staffed by the cruel, burnt out people who usually end up working in those kinds of facilities…
That’s one of the worst fates I can imagine.
And not to mention it’s far more expensive for taxpayers to fund a lifetime of carehome expenses for every one of these survivors, who now, ironically, cannot actually consent to death, despite now being trapped in a reality that is far worse that what they were initially escaping.
This is not about healthcare or ethics, its about having cheap workers.
