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

I get so 'pissed' with people that say "well suicide is legal". Do these people have any idea how difficult it is to commit suicide, the stigma it brings on families and the violent methods that inevitably end up traumatising others (as the ones you can do alone invariably fail). You'd then start moaning about trains being delayed or bodies being found in rivers.

AD should be a choice for anyone who is of sound mind.

Yep, because they haven't actually seen it themselves, a good proportions of suicides I've attended to professionally would have come under the banner of MAID, all died alone, distressing and most found by family.

I expect it’s incredibly difficult and isn’t really relevant in the AD debate.

This is fantastic news, I didn't realise this had happened! YABU who gives you the right, or anyone else's to take someone's life.

Ooh, let's see. Providing good, funded palliative care and providing expensive treatment v making people feel guilty in needing help and bumping off people with serious diseases or conditions in fast order?

There's no such thing as an easy death and don't say that there is because there's no proof that there is. Do you just want people's life to be so crap that they want to die?

That bill would have been the thin end of the wedge.

I agree on both counts - but it's already been stated in this discussion and is used often by those who disagree with the AD principle.

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

Well its cheaper though just to 'off' people

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?

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.

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

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

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 %)

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Yes it’s just so crass as a response.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 .