AIBU to see the government vote against assisted Dying, as preventing personal choice in how we might want to die?

It’s not as simple as let people choose though. People can be put under pressure or manipulated. There are plenty of horrific cases from other countries.

And many proponents of assisted suicide on this thread talk as if doctors are not allowed to give life-shortening medicine if done for the purpose of relieving pain and distressing symptoms. They are. They just have to be prepared to defend the decisions they make, quite rightly.

You're not making a lot of sense here.

My post that you quoted from was in response to another posters concerns regarding MAID not being available to her DH, and an explanation of the legal options availble to them in the UK currently in the continuing absense of a MAID bill.

If you deterioated suddenly without prior advanced care planning and had a loss of capacity then MAID would not have been available anyway. You also had a good functional baseline to return to, so an entirely irrelevant situation to this thread.

Sepsis can be painful but is not always, and that pain can be managed whether through life extending treatment (antibiotics) OR symptoms palliation. Most natural deaths (sepsis is a natural death) are not acutally painful. Painful death is a common fear in the UK because as a society we have become so out of touch with death and dying, with many people having never seen a normal/ natural death, in reality only about a 3rd of people will experience pain in the run up to or during death.

I am strongly in favour of a MAID bill in the UK, as I don't want you or anyone else having to try and plan your own DIY suicide and execute it at a time which would likely be earlier than you would access MAID if it was a legal option for you. Pushing people to commit suicide at a time when they are still physically/ cognitively able to in case they lose the ability to later is definetly not pro-life!

They did though.

People dying a horrible death or having to resort to a messy suicide will be what those who voted against have achieved.

It didn’t have to be that way.

But those who are against it don’t have to engage, let people choose , No one should be forced to suffer a lengthy and painful death. It’s barbaric.

If your mum said she didn’t want to be a burden and so was going to end her own life, would your reaction be

“Okay mum, I respect your choice. When’s it booked for?”

and not

“Mum you are not a burden, you are my mum and an important part of our family.. We love you and are happy to support you and would be devastated to lose you before your time”

or words to that effect?

I agree the bill was poor but I think a great many of us wouldn’t support AD under any circumstances.

My mum and I were discussing it recently and she said that she could imagine herself deciding to use AD, because she didn’t want us to have to watch her suffer. She feels many of her peers, women in particular, would feel a responsibility not to burden their children, rather than any personal desire to end their life. Out of love, not out of being ‘dragged to the death chamber’ as a pp said. It’s not just ‘vulnerable people’, whatever that really means. It’s a wholesale change to the meaning of human life, in my view. It’s wrong.

I actually don’t think it should be restricted to the terminally ill alone . I’d love to check out once my quality of life becomes Intolerable. I don’t know anyone who wants to be left dribbling in a chair having strangers wipe their arse . We are far too squeamish about death .

You don’t think vulnerable people should be considered when making life-and/death legislation?

They already do though, you just don't see it but paramedics and police do and we read the letters where they express exactly these reasons, and these people die lonely distressing deaths. If they are doing it anyway, let them do it in a dignified and supported way.

I get you. My Great Grandma, who lived in wonderful health to glorious 104 years of age, was completely lucid still when the final time came.
She shouted everyone away from her bedside in her home. I still remember her words: Not like this!! The children don't deserve to remember me like this!! That night she died. She didn't die alone and abandoned, she died how she wanted to. I'm glad she got her final wish.

Do you have any wisdom to impart to us humble peasants?

I don’t want to live in a society where people kill themselves so as not to “be a burden” on others, and are encouraged to do so, which is what will happen.

It would be open to abuse for people to make others feel they are a burden so that they kill themselves, for financial or other reasons.

There are examples from Canada of people invited to consider MAID by public employees because adequate services are not available for that person. This is not a road I think we should go down.

Yes it’s just so crass as a response.

My view is that if they insist on keeping me alive then they can fucking well pay for it.

Noone chooses old age or illnesses like dementia, same as noone chooses cancer. Yet somehow we need to pay for one and not the other. Fuck that. Its so wrong.

Arguably some mental illnesses are terminal illnesses though, progressive worsening of symptoms, refractory to treatment, reduced life expectancy, and real suffering (just because it is mental suffering doesn't make it any less real).

nobody who isn’t terminally ill would be eligible so it’s a complete non argument.

Canada quickly moved on from this criteria (the slippery slope that we’ve been told doesn’t happen) and will be including mental illness from 2027.

It's not opt in and have MAID, it's opt in whilst you have the clear mental capacity to do so to be eligible for consideration for MAID if it is ever required, in order to provide safeguarding reassurance to the people who think MAID will result in instant mass murder of every elderly or vulnerable person in the UK.

And in reverse, don't opt in and you can NEVER be subjected to MAID no matter how much you might be suffering later, as you forfeited your right, and 'safeguarded' yourself from it.

If you want to go full cost benefit on it.

10% of NHS budget is spent on people in their last 12 month of life, if you reduced that 12 months by 3 months per person and that would be the most expensive 3 months, you could use that money to better fund preventative medicine, early diagnosis and earlier treatment all things that would likely have given that person way more additional quality of life time than that 3 months of suffering when they would have liked to have opted for MAID anyway.

Taking your own life is not simple.
It's not a tick box opt in/opt out.

Among the people who get 'the green light' at Dignitas (after a lengthy application & counselling process) so have more than proved that it is something they want, only a small percentage actually go on to die through assisted suicide (appx 5 %)

I'm not against assisted dying, I just don't trust that it will be carried out ethically.

You wouldn't be the first to think that that's a good reason to pass the bill .....

No, I wouldn't have opted for it because I went from healthy to deaths door within a day or two.
I also had the option of a life-saving surgery.

However, I would not have been able nor physically nor mentally take that sort of pain much longer if I didn't have a clear path to the rest of my life in front of me.
I died in pain but I also survived to live with it.
Knowing what it CAN feel like, I'm just not going there in my old age. Absolutely no way. I might buy some class As ahead of time.

It was sepsis. Excruciating pain is one of the main red flag signs.

what, because if my mum said she didn’t want to be a burden I wouldn’t presume to know her own mind better than she does?

Well its cheaper though just to 'off' people

Wow!! I'd hate to be your mum!!!