They don't want us to have a choice over death do they?

[Hunnymonster1]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2lyl8jrvlo.amp

This is so bloody annoying why are we so backward compared to other countries? Other countries have this sorted like america.In some states, belgium, holland, Switzerland.
They are not gonna allow this to happen are they? Which means the rich will go and pay dignitas and the poor will suffer. I am starting to get so annoyed by the mps of this country
Am I being unreasonable into thinking that they are backwards and should have given maybe the British public a referendum on a subject matter so important to individual people. If not a ref why is our country so backwards

Not yet but 🤞

If it’s good enough for pets, it’s good enough for people.

The thing is most people do have the choice to end their lives at any time. Assisted dying is only ever going to be for the sickest and most vulnerable people in society and involves another person basically ending their life. Currently in law this is murder, and clearly it takes very careful thought and debate about whether there should be exceptions to that law. There are no easy answers.

What else would extend this principle to? Litter trays? Leads? Pedigree Chum?

HotTopicsWithImogen

What else would extend this principle to? Litter trays? Leads? Pedigree Chum?

Oh please. The point, clearly, is that if you love pets enough to end their misery why would you not afford your loved ones the same? You are an intelligent person. You know that,

Personally, I want to go on as long as I possibly can. No religion.
My beloved husband has no religion either. He has made his wishes known to me for many years. If he loses mental capacity, I am to take him to Switzerland.
I will if that is what is required Given that I will - hopefully - be rather old then I would rather that his wishes could be fulfilled in our home, in my arms.

Please, explain to me what possible business that is of yours and why that should upset you?

I don't want the society I am part of to sanction killing people.

As I said before, the reason we kill pets is because we own them. Nobody owns a person.

My body my choice. If Wes Streeting doesn't want to be assisted in dying that's up to him and he need not choose it. But fuck him if he tries to prevent me from having that choice.
It's my choice if I have an abortion - those who don't believe in them are not obliged to have one. But I have the lowest opinion of anyone who would take that right away from others. Likewise assisted dying.

People own themselves. People make decisions for themselves. You do not have to agree with my choices but you should not inflict your choices on me.

Is abortion murder too?

You can if you keep refreshing it. (That's what I had to do.)

The formatting is a bit wonky, but here it is:

I went for a mastectomy and they offered me assisted dying, Canadian cancer patient reveals
Patient asked about ‘medical assistance in dying’ as critics say euthanasia has spiralled out of control

A woman undergoing life-saving cancer surgery in Canada was offered assisted suicide by doctors as she was about to enter the operating room.
The case comes as the number of people opting to end their lives under the country’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) program has risen thirteen-fold from 1,018 to 13,241 in 2022.
Assisted dying, which was legalised in Canada in 2016, is now the fifth-leading cause of death in the country.
The case will sound alarm bells in the UK, where a bill on assisted dying is set to be brought forward in parliament this month. If it passes, it would pave the way for the practice to be legalised.
Although details of the British bill have not yet been finalised, it is expected to propose granting terminally ill adults who have six months or less to live access to medical help to end their own lives.
Sir Keir Starmer has said he is “very pleased” that MPs will get the chance to vote on the issue. It will be a free vote and the Government will remain neutral on the subject, but the Prime Minister has previously supported an assisted dying bill and said that he thinks there are grounds for changing the law.
Canada now has the fastest-growing assisted dying program in the world. Only the Netherlands has a higher rate of such deaths.
The increase in deaths has sparked fears disabled and unwell people with complex needs are being put under pressure to choose to end their lives.
‘I was scared and alone’
Speaking anonymously, the 51-year-old cancer patient said of the moment she was offered death instead of surgery: “It floored me... [it was] the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt in my life”.
The patient, a married grandmother from Nova Scotia, explained she was set to undergo a mastectomy operation for breast cancer when a physician asked her if she knew about medical assistance in dying (MAID).
“I was sitting in two surgical gowns, one frontways and one backwards, with a cap on my hair and booties on my feet. I was shivering and in a hard plastic chair and all alone in a hallway,” she said in a video for the Christian Medical and Dental Association.
“The [doctor] sat down and went through all the scary things with me. Then he asked ‘Did you know about medical assistance in dying?’

“All I could say was, ‘I don’t want to talk about that’.
“I was scared and I was alone and I was cold and I didn’t know what was coming.
“Why was I being asked about assisted dying, when I was on my way into what I truly believe was life-saving surgery?”
The grandmother, a store manager, has struggled with lupus, fibromyalgia and migraines since she was a child, but has always managed her disabilities.
In September 2022 she found a lump on her breast and was diagnosed with breast cancer, with her first mastectomy to take place the following month.
Despite declining the offer of the MAID program, the woman was asked about assisted dying again before undergoing her second mastectomy nine months later and spoken to a third time while recuperating in the recovery room after that procedure.
‘Better off dead’
She said the repeat offers made her feel like a burden to doctors and that people in her position “were better off dead”.
“I felt like a problem that needed to be [gotten] rid of instead of a patient in need of treatment.
“I don’t want to be asked if I want to die,” she added.

Multiple Canadian medical professionals have told The Telegraph that this is not an uncommon situation.
“The law does not prohibit it, and campaign groups have argued that [assisted dying] should be offered to anyone who could be eligible,” explained Trudo Lemmens, professor of law at the university of Toronto, who has testified before Canadian parliamentary committees on the introduction of MAID.
The speed with which assisted dying has been hastily expanded in Canada serves as a warning about the danger of legalisation becoming a slippery slope.
“I think people in the UK should be very cautious,” Prof Lemmens said.
Alexander Raikin, a bioethics expert at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre, added: “If we were to talk about those rates with any other cause of death, this would be a national catastrophe.”

One major cause for concern is the impact of assisted suicide on people with disabilities. A coalition of Canadian disability rights organisations mounted a legal challenge last month opposing the expansion of MAID to include the disabled, which they claim has resulted in premature deaths and an increase in discrimination towards people in the community.

100% agree with this.

Do a majority really want it?
Or do a majority really want proper care for those suffering and in pain?

Both sounds good.

Sums up what I would say too.

Watching a loved one die a slow death is horrific. I don't want my family to see what I've seen.

In other countries they do and yes we should have that right it should be our choice funny how your user name must be a fan of her would want freedoms in so many way but not the right not to suffer

I am against assisted dying, I've followed what has happened with assisted dying in Canada and The Netherlands and I think its pretty horrific. Once something like euthanasia becomes acceptable it unfortunately seems to suffer from a kind of mission creep. Initially its for the terminally I'll who are close to death, then its for the long term sick, the mentally ill, the disabled, the elderly, the homeless and the poor. Honestly anyone who supports this needs to take a careful look at what has been going on in Canada.
People there are being offered or applying for a medically assisted death not because they want to die but because they feel it their only option because they are refused the help they actually need.

It's all very well to say its only for a small group of terminally I'll people but once such a law os passed it opens the door to legal action from various pressure groups seeking to expand it. The best defence against that is to simply not allow it.

We have end of life care here, especially in hospices which we should be funding better and making available to more people who need it.

@Thommasina but neither do you! What you are saying is I don’t know my own mind, but some random stranger in the net does and their view trumps.
@ComingBackHome Yeah who knows, I might enjoy choking on my own fluids- unlikely- but you never know.
I’m not saying get a cancer diagnosis and die, by all means I’d have a go at treatment (maybe). But I’m not suffering in agony because some random thinks I should. I’ve seen too many agonising deaths, I know one person passed during their sleep. Assisted death in my opinion is for those who are going to die a painful death imminently and AD could let them go peacefully. Why would you want someone to suffer exactly, maybe you’ll feel differently if it happened to you.

As for hospices they don’t always take away the pain, even if they do I don’t want to wait weeks or months for my body to shut down, getting washed, catheterised, going blind /deaf/ unable to eat/drink, becoming jaundiced and skeletal/ that should my choice. Mine and mine alone.

We also own our own mind so when someone is begging for death because they have a terminal illness are in agonising pain, bed bound and vomiting faeces and this goes on for months until they finally starve to death. You actually think this is OK. Have you ever seen this? Have you ever had a family member beg you to kill them to make it stop.

HotTopicsWithImogen · Today 00:29
I don't want the society I am part of to sanction killing people.

But you are part of one. We spend 56 billion a year on the Armed forces, we make and export billions of pounds of weapons every year, we trade with and support numerous countries that kill people over control of resources so we can get cheap food and oil.

Agree sounds like Diapers and tube fed.. great can’t wait, looking forward to that.

I am pro assisted dying but do have some concerns about implementation. I’ve see too many family members die to think ‘yup that’s ok’.

My granny got stomach cancer in her late 80s. She did pretty well really until she deteriorated to the point of needing full time care. Her last few weeks at home and last month in the nursing home were horrific. I was pretty young but remember visiting and wishing I could put a pillow over her and end it for her. She was in a dark place and in a lot of pain and it was very upsetting to see.it would have been much more dignified if she could have gone a month earlier than she did. This one for me would be a much clearer choice re assisted dying. She was mentally there until the end but quite rationally didn’t want to suffer anymore.

On my husband’s side, 2 of his grandparents have had bad dementia and the very end was not nice for either but they both had good quality of life in the run up and were a bit oblivious once they’d declined enough to be hard work but weren’t obviously suffering. The last 12 months were very bad for both and the last 3 months particularly upsetting. The hard point is knowing at what point you’d have said no more.They both still took some pleasure from life even when the dementia had taken so much from them. They would have certainly not had mental capacity to make a choice once they’d become severely unwell and I’m not sure I’d have wanted to be responsible for a decision as family.

Exactly @Mebebecat its my body and mind, and West Streeting does not have the right to impose his beliefs on to me. If people don't want assistance to die then I respect that; similarly people should respect my wish to seek assistance to die a dignified and peaceful death.

I think because it's provision is the England is already patchy and very often run by charities. People raise money for the charity if they have had a relative go through the hospice or the person makes a gift out thier will. Everyone in my town knows the local hospice and donates as its a local charity people see doing good work and to be honest we sort of assume we might need it one day.

Wheras if less people go as more and more opt for assisted dieing the fundraising would decrease.

Maybe your country has proper palliative care provided by the state?

It’s been on the news repeatedly. Google it.

I relate to all this, it's a tricky one. I've seen so many people die of cancer and other things, they all wanted oblivion at the end and wished for it, but only really in the last week or two. Up until that point they still had hope (even though family knew they were going soon) still got a few minor pleasures and were having those last times with loved ones. It's hard to know when is the right moment.