Pro-choice and severe illness

[everydayiloveyou]

I feel like a lot of pro-life people support the idea of legal assisted suicide/euthanasia/general pro-choice when the person dying is of a certain age and has a certain health condition. For example, it's not rare to hear someone say that they believe an 85 year old person dying of Stage 4 cancer deserves to die with dignity. And that it should be perfectly legal for a doctor to administer a deadly injection or concoction or whatever to such a person. Basically, any case of someone sane and lucid experiencing extreme pain, where the chance of a good outcome is really low.

Since we are all on SS, Im guessing some of you also believe that mental illnesses should be included in that range of "acceptable" diseases. After all, many people will never recover from mental illness, and prospects are very low for certain conditions. Some people don't feel any relief from treatment, or they make the conscious decision to refuse treatment after many failed attempts.

What do you guys think the metrics should be, if any? Like a minimum age or number of treatments attempted and such? Should certain conditions be excluded?

I personally think it'd be fair to allow legal euthanasia for any mentally ill person over age 30, with >10 years of documented severe illness, who has insight. Maybe exceptions can be made up to a minimum of 25 years old. Gotta wait for the brain to finish developing of course. But in general, if you've weighed all your options, tried different things, and still made the sane and rational decision to ctb, I think it's only fair to be able to do so with dignity and autonomy.

 

[XYZ]

I personally think it'd be fair to allow legal euthanasia for any mentally ill person over age 30, with >10 years of documented severe illness, who has insight.

I don't feel comfortable with establishing any criteria for adults because every person is unique in their suffering, and no one can decide for them what is and isn't "enough" suffering.

 

[Superdeterminist]

In my opinion, legal euthanasia should be available to everyone regardless of age. I don't think the field of psychology is advanced enough yet that it can identify all mental illnesses, and also, I don't think that everyone who wants to die is necessarily mentally ill, I think that the choice to die can be made rationally. I think that the treatment options available for suicidality today are woefully inadequate, with drugs and therapy only sometimes working, and often taking a disappointingly long time before they have any beneficial effect.

I don't think that a suicidal person is obligated to try and cure their suicidality, they should do so only if they themselves want to get better. I think that the right to die is a crucial human right for everyone, equal to the right to live. I think that preventing someone from dying when they want to is immoral just as taking someone's life is.

 

[XYZ]

. I don't think the field of psychology is advanced enough yet that it can identify all mental illnesses,

I agree. If the medical community imposed age criteria based on research, they would have to show indisputable, absolut proof for their conclusions. Absolute proof is hard (impossible?) to get in science. You never know what new discovery might turn an accepted theory up side down after a few decades or centuries.

 

[antinatalist123]

I have to wait ten years before I can get legal suicide? Nope, I will die long before that. At any rate, society is not Progressive enough for it to even be considered.

 

[Sprite_Geist]

To add to what everyone else has said: Having a mental illness does not always mean that you are totally incapable of independent thought. A lot of individuals who are mentally ill know that they have an illness, and in fact they are the ones who decide to get a diagnosis in the first place. Surely this shows that they have self-awareness if they can use introspection to examine and admit their internal problems? It is not the illness that is influencing their thoughts to die, but rather the person themselves want to die because of the pain caused by said condition/illness. This is just a hypothesis though and may be wrong.