Assisted Dying

[Nordione1]

I dont know what section to put this in. Im more upset about the vote for it than I thought I'd be. I feel like we have crossed a rubicon somehow.

This sounds like a child's argument.

@TitaniasAss you don't have the choice or the right to take your own life at a time of your choosing. For legal and practical reasons.
Even under the AD bill if a High Court judge decides you can't- you will not be able to.
These arguments demonstrate the slippery slope that AD has put us on- we are already talking about people's right to end their own lives and discussing blink activated consent for the disabled, when the bill hasn't even passed into the Lords.

That's just awful.
It makes me mad to think that this is how so many human beings are existing.

Bring on the legalisation of assisted dying asap i say!

@ismu

its not illegal to die by suicide- it has not been classed as a crime for many years now.

@TitaniasAss

This sounds like a child's argument

your response literally is a child's argument

@ismu

genuinely cannot see why you would want to prolong unnecessary suffering for people. Can you explain that?

Why do you feel like you will be made to feel a burden on society in a few years? Do you have a life limiting condition? If not, hopefully you will still be contributing to society, rather than burdening society?

Apologies if I've missed something.

@LuckySantangelo35 suicide has been decriminalised but society does not help people to do it and actively tries to stop them, at the moment.
If a judge denies someone AD under the bill, then they would be in a grey area and would need to find illegal means to end their life. This is not always possible or practical. Aiding and abetting suicide is a crime- as it should be, for safeguarding reasons.
Even with AD in this bill, no one has a right to end their lives. It's very hard to stop someone that is determined, but we'd try anything stop them. I hope we never lose sight of that.

Just to clarify, my solution to this wouldn't be "blink-activated dying for the disabled".

It would be the ability to pre-declare the right to exercise a request for a greater degree of assistance when the time comes. It would still be contingent on the 6-month rule and the ability to make a decision at that time. It would be the peace of mind to know that a predictable and unavoidable progression towards becoming a prisoner in your own body would not be a barrier towards exercising your choice not to progress further into a period of painful and agonising terminal decline when the time comes.

Say what now?

So only those who have a life limiting condition have a justifiable reason for not ‘contributing to society’ . Can people not SEE how this type of thought process is at least worrying and at worst downright dangerous?

@ismu

you have haven’t answered my question - why do you would want to prolong unnecessary suffering for people in pain who have lost their dignity (or who don’t want to lose their dignity) and who cannot get better and so want to end their misery . Can you explain that? Cos I just think that’s cruel and lacking in compassion and humanity.

This is a discussion forum. If you can't handle people talking about hypothetical situations and what ifs, perhaps Mumsnet isn't for you.

@LuckySantangelo35 I do not wish people to suffer - quite the opposite. I don't think this bill is going to prevent suffering as it's not going to address the situations most people fear due to the obsession with self administered dying. It could actually lead to amendment creep as a result.

There are many, many things that can be done to alleviate suffering that will hasten someone's death and these should be carefully monitored, accepted and consented to. Killing yourself when you have a possible six month prognosis but could have 2 years sets a dangerous precedent for decisions based on probability, not fact.

Twitter is currently unbearable. Vast swathes of people ranging from ill informed idiots to highly intelligent writers and activists who I have long admired seem to think that as of next Tuesday, anyone over the age of 70 will have to beg to be allowed to remain alive. One very amazing lady who I have followed for years is now sobbing because they will now kill her disabled husband who desperately wants to live. Asking for explanations isn't allowed. She is going to engage a solicitor to try to prevent him being killed against his will.

Loads of people crying and sympathising with her, as it's all so cruel and inhumane.

What the actual literal fuck my people. Have we collectively lost our minds? Thousands of likes for 'ok can we kill Ian Huntley then'. I despair.

If you live in a society you should be contributing to it in some way to the extent you can, surely?

you don't have the choice or the right to take your own life at a time of your choosing. For legal and practical reasons.

Yes I do @ismu . I really do.
My brother took his own life 3 years ago. I was, and am, still devastated about it. However, the only comfort I have out of the whole situation is knowing that it really was what he wanted and he is no longer in physical or emotional pain. After 2 failed attempts, he succeeded in what he really, really wanted. I don't believe that anyone can say that it wasn't his right to do so.

I'm leaving this thread now. I respect your right to your view on this, albeit that I don't agree with it. It's very hard to understand something like this unless you have personal experience of it.

@ismu

you don’t get to deny people the right to end their life though at the end of the day. People with illness that causes them immense suffering and pain and where it’s only going to get worse should have the choice to be able to end their suffering. It’s just part of a humane compassionate society. Those who want to live can live. But until you’re in that position you cannot make judgements.

If you are terminally ill and in pain and you are happy to endure the pain right to the end, then don't use it.

The catch-all panacea of palliative care that we think exists is a fairy tale. It doesn't work for everyone. The pathways for some cancers are bearable, others are not. I watched my father starve and de-hydrate to death due to cancer, he wanted to die weeks before he did. He attempted suicide but unfortunately the attempt failed. In the end his dying in any event was an assisted death administered by a palliative nurse. It could and should have been administered several weeks earlier as he wished.

In the same way that torturers say, in the end they all talk. Those who profess they would never use it, I am sure would, in circumstances that I witnessed first hand.

Yeah you’re absolutely right. Let’s start by getting rid of birth injured babies with no prospect of contributing anything to society. Then we can round up the homeless drug users-they’re a bit of a drain to be fair. Give us a few years and we’ll have reduced the population to only fully paid up contributors.

Sounds idyllic.

I’m in my mid-40s now and feel like in a few short years I am going to be made to feel like a burden on society. So things like this AD bill worry me.

That problem isn't the AD bill, and denying the AD bill won't make that problem go away. The problem is the very narrow value of worth that we place on human life in society, and the pressure to conform to a narrow range of idealised perfection.

Society is very good at telling you you're not good enough because you don't conform. And it's very effectively policed by peer pressure. The notion that you're only successful if you're happily married, with healthy children, a professional career, perfect hair, and all your own perfectly aligned teeth.

If you feel like a burden on society the problem is with society. Not you.

@Dreammalildream here's a hypothetical situation- we decide that suicide is a completely open and normal choice and a right.
All the people who have mental heath issues or a st 4 cancer diagnosis kill themselves. Then older people who don't want to be a burden start quietly putting their affairs in order and dying. Next, parents of children with disabilities whose "quality of life" is poor are given consent to end their child's life, followed by adults with learning disabilities and neurodivergence.
So the herd is culled and we are left with the" economically productive".
This is why people are worried. It's inhumane to allow suffering but this does not mean AD is the answer.

I think it went the right way.

Did you miss that I said “to the extent you can”?

In the case of homeless drug users, we should be rounding them up and helping them / treating them so they CAN become contributing members of society.

@TitaniasAss I'm truly sorry about your brother.
He succeeded in what he wanted but people did try to stop him and help him to live.
My view is that we should not give up trying to help. One day there might be a cure for such terrible suffering that is not death. We certainly should not be handing the means of death to people with mental health issues. It is a way of utterly destroying hope.

When Dad was on the Liverpool pathway the doctors just told us that was going to happen and he would die in a day or so. They had a perfunctory 5 minutes with us and that was it. In hospital you just do and agree to what the doctors suggest as you don't know any better. The tremendous guilt I felt as he clung on for a week was horrible and he couldn't speak up for himself. The doctors were wrong about him and I wonder whether they just saw him as someone that needed to go and the bed could be used for someone else.

That's something I worry about with AD. The doctors saying well you will probably die from this so take a pill. There won't be any proper counselling or family counselling to manage it on the NHS I expect..they won't have time. So your family will have to watch you commit suicide possibly in front of other people on a ward as there may not be a private room and then they will have to walk away and tell themselves it was for the best and thereafter imagine what the person who died thought and whether it was the right thing. I'm not explaining myself well but anyone who has been in the position of a loved one dying in hospital will know it is a profound life moment and very hard to get over and the implications that a loved one has committed suicide (for whatever reason) must be very hard to bear.