As medicine developed, we got a chance to live, to the point that we sort of lost our chance to die. I'm too young to really worry about prolonged terminal illnesses, but I sometimes think about this nowadays, as my father passed away very recently, from lung cancer, discovered very very late, at terminal stage. He was a strong, dynamic man in his fifties, and in two months he passed away. I recall my grandfather's terminal stage which dured some five, six years, until 2010. He had many illnesses, and he was too weak to walk in his last two-three years. Comparing the two, I do not really know what to think, but in this context, after lightly reading the article linked too, I guess everybody should have the right to renounce their lives, with assistance from someone who'll guarantee a peaceful and certain death: an ignorant, solo attempt might result in getting into a state where suicide is physically impossible and pain is greater. And I sometimes think the state is way too much intertwined into people's lifes, but that's another topic.
It is insane that we make people huddle into dark alleys and underground societies, simply to have agency over their own lives.<p>I know and understand the main arguments against assisted suicide. The idea that it would pressure people into taking their own lives, in order to please others. With respect, such arguments are nonsensical. People feel external pressures every day to do things that they may not want to do. Pursue careers they may not enjoy. Get married when they may not want to. Have kids even if they don't want to. Should the government step in every time and ban the activity entirely, simply to ensure that no one ever gives in to peer pressure? Of course not.<p>We recognize that freedom, liberty and individual agency, trumps any concerns about peer pressure. We recognize that our life decisions should be in our own hands, and not in the hands of big brother. It's time we allowed people full control to end their lives on their own terms, and not on the terms forced upon them.
It's interesting how they can do assisted suicide, yet many states have trouble carrying out executions. Strange, is the stuff doctors use any better or are they're botched assisted suicides also? Do they get to use somthing better than the prisons have?
If you've seen a family member suffer from terminal cancer for years, rotting away while still being alive and suffering from such horrible pain that no amount of medication can reduce it, there is just no way you are against assisted suicide, trust me on that. We treat our dogs better than that. We kill them to spare them from such a fate.
Die with dignity;
<a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Ageing-indebted-Japan-debates-right-to-die-with-dignity/articleshow/51276408.cms" rel="nofollow">http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Agein...</a>
When I was 20 I wanted to kill myself. Thank whomever that assisted suicide isn't a socially acceptable practice because I could have easily gone into some clinic and had someone kill me without my family knowing.
I consider myself very lucky that no one tried to kill me when I was suicidal. It's going to get a lot more dangerous now that able-bodied young people are getting social and medical "support" that kills them for their possibly temporary depression or nihilism.<p>Suffering can always be made meaningful and abolition of pain is not a goal for society but a enervation unto death.<p>Just now in Canada, doctors and nurses are being forced to choose between their professions and holding to a religion that forbids murder. These are their options:<p>"They can keep their heads down and pray they are never asked to kill a patient.
They can surrender and become part of the death machine—at the risk of the eternal consequences that their faith beliefs portend.
They can give up their careers and hand the keys of what are now religious medical institutions to secular ownership (or, move to the United States where, at least for now, doctors and nurses enjoy conscience protections).
Finally, the difficult but most righteous course would be to engage in a policy of total non-cooperation with the culture of death, forcing the national and provincial governments and medical colleges either to turn a blind eye or to inflict unjust punishments on doctors for refusing to kill. Perhaps such draconian measures would bring the country to its senses."<p><a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/03/canada-declares-war-on-christian-doctors-and-nurses" rel="nofollow">https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/03/canada-de...</a>