Ok Boomers and euthenasia

[Backinthecloset123]

I'm in NZ where a bill has just been passed to have a referendum on euthinasia/assisted dying. This will take place next year.

I have always been a firm advocate....until now. As one of the last baby boomers I'm aware that our numbers are starting to peak in elder care and resources, and will continue to peak for quite a few years.

My issue is, will euthenasia be embraced by the woke in a similar way that gender/queer/trans issues have?

Will, or could, many non boomers think of us boomers the same way they think of te*fs? (non rationally). Could it get out of hand as trans ideology has?

I'm blown away how quickly queer Theory entailed rationality went out the window, and can see the same possibly happening in other areas including assisted dying.

Strange times.

Lol at someone coming to 'educate us'. That pretty much sums up the issue.
Firstly, you're clearly assuming that the people who disagree with you are unfamiliar with what a meme is or how it works , or that we're unfamiliar with the specifics of how ok boomer is used , or that we just don't like new trends or that plenty of us aren't actually millennial ourselves .
Funny how the 'educate yourself' lot never bother to actually educate themselves about what someone else is actually saying and make a counter point to that.
Far easier to just rely on lazy stereotypes and lazier assumptions and then feel self-righteous when you tell people off.

I am from the tail end of the baby boomer generation.

I have never believed in any sort of assisted dying or euthanasia of any sort.

We were in hospital recently and the DNR was discussed with the adult children of the patient. Not the patient.
It was decided between the dr and children that the parent shouldn’t be resuscitated.

They died soon after.

And not by drifting off to sleep.

I've been concerned about the 'boomer' insults, and I actually thought it was the opposite - that this generation was the first one to despise the older generations.
No as I remember it, we (boomers) were pretty awful about our parents. It was a mixture of taking the piss and blaming them for plunging us into the shadow of nuclear war - which was a very real threat then.
So lots of parallels with today and arguably there's a bit of karma coming back to bite us on our aging arses. But what I can't imagine every happening back them was someone writing an article in the Times saying young people were right. That's the new bit, I think, and I'm not sure how seriously to take it.

I am pro women's choice and pro- euthanesia but the other day on Mumsnet, a pregnant woman was berated for not having an abortion as she will just be a burden to the tax-payer. I find that chilling. Now, because abortion exists as an option, women have no right to expect any help, even from the man who impregnated them:

I’m a Boomer by about 5 months. I’m in my 50’s.

I have never derided a Millennial in my life thank you very much. They have it bloody tough, in fact it’s awful for them. And l have Millennial Dc. And I’m jealous if the technology they have, and think l would very much liked to have had that at their age.

Tornmum👌🏻

I'm GenX, and I simply don't believe that "OK boomer" is a response to baby boomers slagging off millennial. Baby boomers are the grandparents of millennials. Are we really expected to swallow the view that they don't understand or care how tough things are now?

I think my answer is yes, it probably will be embraced by the woke in that way. But to some extent, it's a more that people accept the ideas floating around in the culture about the topic, and then take them to their logical conclusion.

You can see that has happened in a number of countries where they attempted to put limits and safeguards on euthanasia, which have since been broken down. When your reasoning is that everyone should have the right to make their own decisions, it becomes difficult to restrict how and when those decisions can be made. When you say it is a matter of suffering, it becomes difficult to say, no that doesn't include suffering from mental illness, or in children, or the cognitively impaired, they just have to suck it up. When it's that some things make life not worth living, it begins to shape people's views of what kinds of conditions lead to an unacceptable life.

This has an effect over time on how people think about an acceptable type of life which has all kinds of implications and means they will be inclined to push the law further.

When these are seen as charter type rights it also becomes possible for lobby groups to change the law through court challenges, even if people overall don't really think that way. This is a lot like some of the trans activist's work, it seems to be the new way to create social change.

Cocoyan I have noted that trend on MN as well and it disturbs me. Pro-choice should be precisely that, about choice - and if the social pressure is to abort in certain circumstances rather than to provide support, then the choice element is eroded. Choice only exists if there are alternatives available, otherwise it becomes another form of coercion.

I am against euthanasia, always have been, because I think it would too easily slip into decisions about whose lives were worthy of keeping and whose not. History tells us that.

I've recently fallen out with a friend who keeps using these memes on Facebook, and uses similar fatuous defences about boomer being a state of mind rather than being about age. We're both Gen X, although she's got ten years on me, so I have no particular skin in the boomers vs millennials game. I just think it's the acceptable face of ageism and it has definite parallels with writing off older feminists as "second wave" and therefore irrelevant. She has form for that too. She will probably be an ex-friend before too long.

I think what disturbs me about it is the anger directed at other people's use of resources. It's a sort of "how dare you exist and take up a house and have money", even if you got the house and money through decades of working and paying into the system. How often as older women are we made to feel like we're taking up too much space just by existing?

As for the euthanasia link, I hadn't thought about it, but it does make a sort of sense. When I think about how many younger people I knew who were furious with older Leave voters and made comments to the effect that "why should they have a say, they'll be dead soon"... In a society that doesn't value older people, especially older women, where they're seen as an inconvenience at best and an unnecessary burden at worst, where there is so little tolerance for people with different viewpoints to the extent that their lives are seen as less valuable than others - these are circumstances under which I would not want vulnerable older people to be at the mercy of others' opinion on the worth of their lives.

I had my ds (a Millenial) at 29. I’m a very very late Boomer (l actually belong in Gen Jones),
but I’m a mother of a Millenial, not a grandma!!!

Millennial even!

Once it becomes an option, for many vulnerable people it will become an obligation.

Gen X here.

OK Boomer bothers me a lot, but that's because I see it as one meme among many in an ageist and sexist culture. It's also ahistorical, divisive and simplistic.

My concerns about euthanasia predate this meme, and relate to the treatment and socialisation of women, and a concern that women (especially older/disabled/single/childless/poor/mentally ill) will be familially, socially and medically managed into 'choosing' euthanasia.

The resurgence in misogyny I see around me in the gender debates does not discourage me from this concern.

I'm 64. I'm fit and healthy and very pro 'right to choose' whatever that might be - so long as (in most cases) the chooser is adult.

I am so much in favour of the right to choose that I would rather choose to die tomorrow rather than at some stage be unable to make that choice and have to exist without really living.

Older voters may actually want and vote for the option of assisted dying in some circumstances.

Some terminal conditions’ terrible and painful symptoms cannot be helped v much by palliative care.

I agree with most of the previous posters, and just want to say that concerns about euthanasia and (since someone else brought it up) abortion often get written off as a right wing scare tactic.
I think of both in the same way that I think of prostitution actually - someone is (often- not always) in desperate need, and what do we offer? Kill you, kill your fetus, or sexually exploit you. If this is the best humanity can do for our vulnerable, we're royally fucked.

I do believe in free will and free choice, I get that situations aren't black and white. But there is a certain, shallowness of respect for the literal life and death weight these topics carry. A frivolous, thought terminating cliche is not bloody good enough. Where's the solemnity?

And we have seen how fast gatekeeping/safeguarding can be obliterated. How quickly laws can be ignored and undermined. I don't trust the people (mostly men) in power to not abuse that power.

I heard someone say once, re euthanasia, that the difficulties we can predict and try to create safeguarding for are so frightening. What are the unforseen, unintended horrors?
Who could have predicted that passing the GRA for

I guess mostly I'm afraid for the heart of a peoples who are quick to offer death or exploitation as a solution. What does that do to our humanity? We know that executioners suffer extreme trauma.

People don't want death, they want something other than pain...

I've always been cautiously in favour of right to euthanasia, am having qualms. Scientists have said over population is one of the crisis points of climate change. So why do we have over population - 'cos people are living longer and who lives longest -women.
A rational case can be made for getting rid of the elderly when resources are scarce. A lot of the witch burning was about acquiring money from older women.
I really don't have much faith in humanity anymore.

So imagine this:

Euthanasia laws have passed. They're still quite strict, you must be quite elderly or have health conditions that won't let you live more than another 2-3 years.

At first, some people choose euthanasia options, while others choose to live as long as possible, hoping to be there for the milestones of their children and grandchildren, or just not go gentle into that good night.

All is well.

Then, a social campaigner notices: a huge percent of lifetime medical costs for most people happens in their final year of life. The NHS is already quite strapped for cash. With so many young and working people needing faster and better healthcare access, it can only be concluded that spending a large amount of money to ensure that grandma can spend one last Christmas at home is really a generational wealth transfer from young people to old people. Quite simple, really.

Then, the pressure begins to mount. It's environmentally unfriendly to try to stick around, you know. Old people simply cost more to keep going. Much like you see with women who have 4+ children now, you'd get all the comments on those who chose to prolong their lives: "a bit selfish, isn't she?"

And it would be "she," by the way. This will disproportionately impact women, because women are by far the more common spouse in a heterosexual marriage to outlive the other--many men will refuse to avail themselves of it until their quality of life is truly in decline because their spouse wants and needs them close, but women are more likely to be widows living alone. Women are expected to give more up, and to take on more burdens for others. We are the ones who live longer and we don't drop dead of sudden heart attacks as often as men do, so we cost more.

This is the scenario when we confine it to elderly and very ill people. If we allow euthanasia for intractable depression, as some countries do, all you must really do in order to exercise population control over unpopular groups is depress them with poor circumstances, then wait for them to volunteer. Or push them into it, and tell the world they volunteered.

(everyone knew they were depressed, after all!)

^I heard someone say once, re euthanasia, that the difficulties we can predict and try to create safeguarding for are so frightening. What are the unforseen, unintended horrors?
Who could have predicted that passing the GRA for

But there is a certain, shallowness of respect for the literal life and death weight these topics carry. A frivolous, thought terminating cliche is not bloody good enough. Where's the solemnity?

This reminds me of something I read a while ago, by Chris Hedges, who is an American journalist on the left. He tends to be very reflective though about problems or blindspots in leftism or progressivism.

One of the things he said which I think is very true is that one of the well-placed criticisms that conservatives make of the left is there is this idea that whole systems can be thrown away and then built from scratch. But in fact a society is so complex with so many elements and interconnections that we often don't realise are there. Social practices that we may believe are simply prejudices or meaningless can often have important functions or be protective in ways we don't realise, and so it can pay to be very careful about removing or changing them.

I dunno about hipsters, but I think the one thing that might get assisted dying in the UK is, and I think this is a possibility, a wave of older suicide. As large numbers of people age who have seen their own parents experience miserable final years of frailty and/or dementia I wouldn't be surprised if a significant number decide they don't want to go out like and decide to take their own life while they have the capability once their start to lose mobility or marbles.

“People don't want death, they want something other than pain.“

But palliative care often cannot alleviate pain and terrible symptoms, so death or continued suffering is the choice. And if you’re not physically capable to kill yourself or travel overseas you don’t currently have a choice. If you can see it coming you can choose death much earlier than you would prefer, or the choice is no longer available to you.

The use of "boomer" has moved from being descriptive to a thought-terminating cliché.

We're in an age of thought-terminating clichés.