To think voting for assisted dying legalisation could be a huge mistake???

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In Scotland they are voting to legalise assisted dying. Looking likely to pass. I am worried this will come to England now. Kier is already proving he doesn't care about old and disabled people so this scares me.
Obviously there are 2 sides but how can people be so ignorant? If passed this could be one of the biggest opportunity for corrupt evil behaviour of saving money on the NHS, care, people literally getting away murder, playing god! No not good. It's so scary.

Not everyone feels the benefit of medication or therapy. Not everyone gets over depression, for some its lifelong.

Also some mentally healthy people can have episodes of feeling suicidal.

But you are correct when you say suicide is not illegal and people can choose if they wish to live or not.

No, you're talking about capacity. However, if you're ill, you're not in your right mind and therefore shouldn't make such as decision.

The problem with what you're talking about is AS for mental illness. You seem to want to differentiate between different types of mental illness but that's unlikely to happen.

Someone experiencing bi polar depression, someone who's received bad news such as a diagnosis or a bereavement, someone with clinical depression, they all carry a suicide risk.

It's also common to feel suicidal when you receive a terminal diagnosis. You may initially feel suicidal but then want to spend as much time as possible with your loved ones.

People change their minds all the time, people can recover. Instead of helping people to kill themselves perhaps we should invest in decent mental health support.

We will need to agree to disagree!

The issue of capacity is a contentious one as well, given recent experiences with my SM and her mental health. There's fluctuating capacity for a start, and the right to make "unwise decisions" is enshrined in the MHA. I honestly don't know what to think about it all to be honest, I keep arguing myself round in circles.

‘Unwise decisions’ are only unwise though if the person is able to weigh up the decision and understand the pros and cons and still decide to go ahead. The act is clear that an ‘unwise decision’ is very different from a decision made in yhd absence of capacity.
cFluctuating capacity can be addressed to - if a person wishes to make a decision whilst they have capacity and knows that yheir capacity sometimes fluctuates they are still making the capacitous decision whoch still stands once capacity is gone again. The real trick is having a skilled assessor who understand the MCA and can do a thorough assessment by asking the right questions

Could you give an example of a mentally healthy person feeling suicidal please?

Why shouldn’t people decide when they want to die and given that choice? I think few have what’s deemed a ‘good death’ I don’t believe that anyone is going to be saying to a person with mental health issues ‘we can end your suffering by popping you off’

We should all get to choose to die in a dignified and peaceful way.

I welcome it hope it does get in the uk.

But what if I truly don't want to feel like a burden, and I have a terminal illness? Those are my feelings, not anyone else's. Isn't it my right to choose that being alive and a burden isn't for me?

Your free choice will be another woman's coerced choice, though.

The same can be said of many things, from abortion to surgery, sex, even marriage.

None of those mean certain death.

Death is already certain. This bill is for the terminally ill.

no you have misunderstood. I don't want that terrible end for me. I have seen people die like that who didn't want that end. Its not because the memory is hard (although it is) but because those people wanted not to be suffering like they were and knew the only end to their suffering was death.

We're talking about coercion. Death is certain for those coerced into it and has far bigger ramifications than getting married or having sex.

Yes but the person being coerced is facing certain, imminent death already. It isn't ethical to condemn one woman to certain suffering for the possibility that another hypothetical woman may face some coercion.

Yes I've heard many people talk about periods in their life when they felt like that, but they are what you would categorise as 'normal". The most sane happy person I know actually contemplated suicide during a rough patch in their life.

But these people dont go down the route of suicide clinics in Switzerland as they havent suffered with it long term, it's a phase brought on by something. If your a sane person you know your own brain- whether it's a happy one or a depressed one. You know what your normal is.

We don't know that for certain because people have been known to be misdiagnosed, to recover and to live long after a given time frame.

There's also a concern that the criteria will widen, as you can see on this thread, there are people with mental health problems who want AS and those with chronic illnesses.

If we invested properly in palliative care, health care and mental health services, perhaps people wouldn't feel so desperate.

There's a danger that people may feel pressured to end their lives because they feel like a burden, they may be coerced by family who want their inheritance, by abusive partners or by medical staff to cut costs.

It's not ok to shrug your shoulders about coerced death.

Yes and it will be your choice!!

But I think the issue is about why you would feel like a burden. Is it a failure of society? Is someone trying to take advantage of you and so is making you feel like a burden because then the state will kill you and they an have your money/house etc? Is it an abusive marriage, so the husband is so manipulative that they make their wife feel such a burden that she should choose assisted dying? Isn't that just using this policy as a murder weapon?

That is the danger of allowing the fact that someone feels a burden to be a reason.

Look grey to me

I think dying is burdensome borne both by those who are ill and those that love them. I wouldn’t want my children to witness me suffering / having a painful death. I’m sure they would help me and nurses me and care for me because they love me.

It feels very unnecessary to me I’m pragmatic so if I was ill I’d like to choose assisted suicide for a relatively quick end. Partly because I don’t want to suffer but my family doesn’t need to either.

This is not about the right to choose death. It's about the right to kill other people.

You already have the right to end your own life. What you don't have is immunity from the law if you kill someone else, whose life you judge as not worth living.

I'm sure I don't need to say why I'm philosophically and morally opposed to that. Pragmatically, the opportunities for misuse and the legal paradoxes they raise are immense and can't be covered off in advance. You'd need a highly specific, verifiable definition of "a life not worth living". If that were even possible, there would still be doubt and disagreement.

Charities for disabled people, for old people, and domestic violence campaigners are opposed to such a law. Maybe think about why they are.

People feeling like a burden is more often than not a very personal feeling and nothing to do with the actions of other people. A lot of depressed people say similar things - when their loved ones around them want the best for them and would hate for them to die.

It will be up to the individual person if they would like to use the option (if they fall under the very specific requirements). It doesnt get decided for them.