Assisted Dying is Sexist

[lcakethereforeIam]

This is a facet that I hadn't thought of, now I'm thinking how could I have been so blind

https://archive.ph/uhGgX

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/25/assisted-dying-is-sexist-report-finds/

I'm not entirely against people being killed by their Doctors, if that is their wish, they're going to die soon anyway and the alternative is unrelievable pain. My misgivings were from watching how it had played out in countries where it is legal, particularly Canada. I was also worried about coercion but somehow I hadn't thought how gendered that is. How it's usually the male sex that does the coercion.

Couldn't agree more.

https://open.substack.com/pub/carolinecriadoperez/p/they-just-dont-want-me-over-christmas

Excellent article from Caroline Criado Perez. Talks.about abuse and dv.

Got this in my mailbox this morning from Caroline Criado Perez on the subject:

https://open.substack.com/pub/carolinecriadoperez/p/they-just-dont-want-me-over-christmas

(sorry just seen someone else has also posted this)

It's a good article. The section on mercy killings and the quotes from sentencing are particularly sobering.

However, I thought the link between the "they just don't want me over Christmas" story and assisted suicide was very poorly made.

The elderly woman in question here was brought in by her son and daughter-in-law who told Santhouse, “She just isn't right,” before leaving and turning off their phones. On her own, the woman, now in tears, told Santhouse there was nothing wrong with her. “They just don’t want me over Christmas.” This episode may shock you as it did me. The thought of doing such a thing to my own mother causes me physical pain in my stomach and a lump in my throat. I simply cannot bear it. But, says Santhouse, the medical profession quickly disabused him of his “notions of people always behaving honourably or having respect for the elderly.”

Clearly there is more going on than "they just don't want me over Christmas". If you just don't want someone over Christmas you just don't invite them. Unless you are responsible for meeting all their care needs of course.

I am concerned that carer burnout will lead to people being pressured to end their lives early, but calling unpaid carers dishonourable and minimising their work shifts this responsibility from the state onto carers who, in most cases, will be female.

A friend of DHs is a doctor and her speciality is working on wards with older people.

She uses the phrase 'granny dumping season' so I think the term is fairly widely used.

When we talk about the crisis in NHS wards during the winter this is never mentioned as a factor in creating problems. We know about bed blocking but 'granny dumping' isn't referred to even in more politically correct manners.

So I do think there is a massive lack of awareness of this and how older women are seen / how stretched carers are that they feel they have no other choice.

Thanks for the link to the substack @ArabellaScott and for dragging the thread back on track.

This quote from a book mentioned by CCP resonated with me, summing up what, i feel, many of the people who aren't terminal and who ask to die may really be saying

They are asking for help to live. They are saying that they can't see how they can cope with the problems that they have, and are asking for help in finding a way through the seemingly impossible difficulties that lie ahead. To take their request at face value, and to whisk them over to the nearest assisted dying clinic, is to abrogate our responsibilities to the patient.

The case of the elderly lady who was thrown off a balcony by her son featured in a documentary programme. The focus of the programme was the police investigation,

The son admitted killing his mother (who had dementia and was in a nursing home) in the police interview but he wasn’t charged / prosecuted.

The son had decided that his mother’s suffering was too great, entirely coincidentally of course, at exactly the point at which the money for her nursing home fees was running out.

I think the passing of the Bill shows the HoC in a poor light. Given a free vote, do MPs really take the trouble to read up, and thoroughly acquaint themselves with complex issues involved, or do they lazily go with 'what seems the right thing to do, according to some pressure groups'? I can't help but feel, in many cases, it was the latter. Notable that Streeting voted against.

I wrote to my MP on the morning of the vote and basically got a form letter to tell me that she had made her mind up to vote for it.

I suspect that writing earlier wouldn't have made a difference.

I agree.

If you don't like the idea, you don't have to do it. But personally, I'd like to know I'd have the option if I was suffering. As it is, the UK proposals are extremely limited and don't go far enough in my view. Some people are in agony and don't have a terminal prognosis and they'll be forced to continue in their agony.

I also don't understand why palliative doctors oppose a change in the law. They KNOW that since Shipman, they can't alleviate suffering adequately because if they accidentally give too much painkillers and the person dies, they are in trouble.

Before Shipman, you could actually alleviate suffering, but now medical staff are too scared to actually make sure people are given enough painkillers.

Just came here to post this https://newsletter.carolinecriadoperez.com/p/they-just-dont-want-me-over-christmas but you beat me to it. This is very much a feminist issue.

What's the incentive to find cures for anything when it's cheaper for big pharma, the NHS and the taxpayer to kill people?

Have you tried pasting "why do palliative care doctors oppose assisted dying?" into Google?

I just did this, here is what I came up with:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2024/10/qa-why-are-so-many-palliative-care-doctors-against-assisted-dying

I'd never realised the weight of this argument until just recently, listening to David Runciman on Hume's defence of the right to end one's own life.
What would medicine look like if, in the 18th century, it had turned towards helping patients end their lives as a way to alleviate suffering. Would we have the life expectency we do?

I think these are slightly different things, though.

Big pharma is profit driven. The logic of capitalism is that big pharma will go where the money is, and in part, this will be ways of improving the drugs for assisted death etc. They will make money out of it. The research into assisted death would be at the expense (literally) of life-saving treatments but I am not convinced that the money to be made from assisted dying outweighs the money to be made from years of treatment.

The NHS and the government (spending tax payers money, I don’t think we can generalise about what the tax payers wants except in terms of what they elect representatives to do) have an imperative to save money, or at least to balance the books and reduce budget deficits, though. Therefore, the danger is that it becomes cheaper to kill people than budget for treatment.

People are willing to dump their own elderly relatives at hospitals. They aren't going to be bothered by someone else's elderly relatives dying sooner to fund that tax cut.

Referring to “granny dumping” I have no doubt that there are callous, selfish people out there who would do this then bugger off on holiday for a fortnight.

However, I bet for the majority of cases it is much more complex. If the family is abandoning their elderly relative at hospital, that must mean that the family are the primary source of support and the elderly person doesn’t have external care visits. Winter is also when many conditions worsen (DM has a winter/GMT mode that is considerably more confused than BST/summer mode), when infections run riot, when everyone is at their lowest ebb, especially with the stresses and strains of Christmas.

I bet a lot could be explained by carer burnout, inadequate support from the care system and by the elderly person not necessarily being the sweet old lady/man gratefully accepting medical advice and their relatives’ help, and determined to be stubborn and in denial about their declining capacity independent. Those who have always had difficult relationships with their parents find that doesn’t change but frailty and vulnerability add a new dimension, especially if the parent has been prone to bullying or manipulation.

I don’t think I could ever do it to my DM, but my own mental health has taken a beating this year and it gave me an insight into how it’s possible to get to a stage where taking someone to a&e and leaving them would seem to be the best course of action.

My point is that when some people, even a minority, will abandon an elderly relative who is physically present, it's a given that a larger proportion of people will not care about someone else's relative who is a stranger to them and certainly won't feel particularly compelled to vote for a political party that says "we will raise taxes to improve palliative care".

A bit like how not all that many people care about starving children in Africa: someone else's family, someone else's problem.

My point was that tax payers are not a homogeneous group, they will have different views and principles. There are people who spend large proportions of their lives caring for elderly relatives. Not everyone is going to be sanguine about elderly relatives dying to fund tax cuts.

Leadbeater's loading the dice

https://archive.ph/0NMfZ

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/18/kim-leadbeater-has-stacked-the-deck-on-assisted-dying/