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I don't understand why helping people who want to die is illegal in most countries. It's unfathomable why some people are against that. If I become deeply sick

I don't understand why helping people who want to die is illegal in most countries. It's unfathomable why some people are against that. If I become deeply sick when I am of age I will probably also want to decide when I want to die and not die slowly and painfully. People who are against letting people choose their own death is having a selfish and evil stance, there is no way to excuse that.

sokoloff 10y ago
One concern is, what if the person doesn't really want to die but the "care"givers want their ordeal to be over, or want to collect an inheritance, or collect an inheritance before it's all gobbled up by end-of-life care? In genuine cases of wanting out, I support it, but I'm not sure how to design the right controls around it to be fully comfortable with it.
- rev_bird 10y ago
  I'm from the U.S., and I'm guessing you are too -- I wonder, in Europe, if "end-of-life" care bankrupts old people like it does here.
  - notlisted 10y ago
    It won't. Socialized medicine works. Note: It probably doesn't just bankrupt old people here… I've seen whole families affected by last-ditch efforts to squeeze out a few more months. Second mortgages. College funds. It's horrifying. (live in US, from Europe)
naringas 10y ago
I think it's related to christian morality. They belive something along the lines of "God gave you your life and only Him can decide when it should end"
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Pro-life.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    Anti-choice.
- Luc 10y ago
  This is getting downvoted, but at least in Belgium it is mainly Christian organisations that opposed, and continue to oppose, the euthanasia laws.
danieltillett 10y ago
There is only one rational reason and that is to discourage the impulsive. Suicide is not something to be entered into lightly.
jacquesm 10y ago
It's mostly a vestige of religion. Life is considered sacred and it is not supposed to be your own choice whether you want to live or die but up to god in some form or other. This then became enshrined in law as well as in medical practice (though in medicine there has long been a recognition that not all life extending medical practice is compatible with medical ethics doctors are still bound by the laws of the land and in plenty of cases doctors that assisted with suicide have been charged with murder). Quite a few countries have now moved to the point where in the case of grave illness or pain you have the ability to request an end to your life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_euthanasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_euthanasia
lambdaphagy 10y ago
There are plenty of fathomable reasons why some people are against that, just as there are plenty of fathomable reasons why others are for it. Anyone who professes not to understand half of a debate might reconsider their confidence on the issue.
MichaelBurge 10y ago
Because then your kids could forge a signature on a fake letter to get your inheritance money. Because then companies that happen to profit from your death have an incentive to convince you that you should die, using manipulative advertising and marketing. Because then people who are highly depressed might kill themselves with assistance from a doctor, when an alternate route could cure them. Because then the doctor might forge evidence showing that you wanted to be killed and it could be hard for the police to track down. Maybe they only use the attack against certain high-reward targets. Because then somebody who is impulsive might agree to be killed when he would've regretted it later if he were still alive. I tend to be in favor of this for people who legitimately want to die, but there's something to be said for the simplicity of "The autopsy showed poison, so we have a murder case." I could be convinced to make it illegal if somebody found some really plausible attacks that could be used against me; and could be convinced to make it legal if we found and required a scientific test with a legally-enforcable chain-of-custody that proved I was in my right mind when I asked to be killed.
- CaptainZapp 10y ago
  Those are all valid points. But oddly enough none of them seems to be a problem in Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal since the 40s (as mentioned in the article). On a sidenote: You can write a "Patientenverfügung" (loosely transelated: a patient's will), in which you stipulate that you don't want to be kept alive artificially in case of grave illnes. This is respected by hospitals and doctors. Case in point was my mother, who had terminal cancer. The doctors gave her morphine to ease the pain and otherwise didn't do anything to prolong her suffering. She died in a dignified manner.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    We have "living wills" in the United States and they're the same thing. The controversial issue is active euthanasia, not passive euthanasia. Mostly, anyway.
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    >Because then somebody who is impulsive might agree to be killed when he would've regretted it later if he were still alive. We wouldn't always know in such cases, and there's often no way to know what a dead person would have thought years later if they would have lived.
frogpelt 10y ago
You may find this amazing, but not everyone shares your world view. No one wants to suffer. And no one wants to see other people suffer. But the truth is suffering is a part of life. Some people I know and love have suffered their last few years of life. And other people I know and love have taken their own lives. My personal experience is that the individuals who allowed death to come on its terms, instead of rushing to that conclusion, left everyone around them with more strength, peace, happiness, and personal growth. The people who ended their life because they didn't want to suffer anymore left a wake of suffering and trouble around them when they went. It's unfathomable why you wouldn't see the difference.
- Retric 10y ago
  Not everyone suffers to the same extent or has family and close friends at the end. The goal should be a life worth living not a continuation of cellular activity. It's a failure of empathy to equate emotional pain that was going to happen anyway with the kind of pain drugs can't deal with. I really can't equate your stance to anything but sadism on a massive scale. Suffer, so I can avoid feeling bad for a little while and pretend the end is not so bad.
- staticelf 10y ago
  I don't find that amazing, because I knew it already. As I wrote in my original post: > People who are against letting people choose their own death is having a selfish and evil stance, there is no way to excuse that. I understand that people oppose such freedoms, but I find it to be selfish and evil. Just look what you wrote: > left everyone around them with more strength, peace, happiness, and personal growth. That is only proof of my original statement.
  - frogpelt 10y ago
    Your stance is just as selfish and just as evil to many others.
DanielBMarkham 10y ago
Libertarian here, so I'm comfortable with people owning their own bodies and being solely responsible for what they do with it. Having said that, I'd like to make the case for keeping it illegal because I believe there's a strong case to be made. Killing yourself should be a unique, extraordinary event in both your life and the lives of those around you. We should never make a system out of killing people, because systems can be gamed. In a way, this is much the same discussion as the old "would you torture a terrorist to determine where a nuclear bomb was waiting to go off?" Yes. Yes I would. I would consider such an act to be horribly immoral, and I might regret it to the day I die, but yes, I would. Likewise I'd take my own life or help people I love take theirs -- but I would worry over whether I did the right thing or not. If I were a religious person, I might consider my act immoral. But I'd still do it. Once you create a system out of killing people -- people go in one side, forms get filled out, and dead people come out the other -- you've taken a step towards the state arbitrarily deciding who lives or dies based on its own system of value and not the individual's. So in a way, you give up much more in this fashion than if you simply outlawed it and never prosecuted. (Which is probably what happens 90% of the time in countries where assisted suicide is illegal.) So yeah, I'd torture the terrorist. But I'd raise holy hell for any system of government where torture was a accepted way of doing things. Good grief, can you imagine what just a little tweaking would do to a system like that? Speeding is illegal. If you want to speed on the way to the hospital because somebody you love is in danger? Speed. By all means, speed. I'll be the first person to protest any law enforcement person that tries to stop you. But speeding should probably still be illegal for systemic reasons not related at all to your loved one being ill.
- the_ancient 10y ago
  Libertarian Here... I challenge how you square your belief with libertarianism If you say it illegal for a person to commit suicide you are staking a claim to their life, you are saying you own them That is about as far from libertarianism as you can get
  - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
    My stance is that I have that right. So do others. I made an argument that from a systemic standpoint, it's better to make illegal and never prosecute than it is to create a governmental machine around it. Please understand, I'm perfectly happy with it being legal. I'm simply trying to describe why there's a strong case for it remaining illegal (and un-prosecuted) You realize that we're not talking about people freely deciding what to do with themselves, right? What we're talking about is a bunch of new laws, committees, and processes where a person's life can be terminated, sometimes directly by the state. I'd think this is a much worse situation than simply having officials look the other way. If we were talking about removing all laws around what folks do with their lives, that'd be a different thing entirely. That's where we should be. But nobody is talking about that.
dominotw 10y ago
I recently saw an NPR debate about this Intelligence Squared Debate: Euthanasia Should be Legalised https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7dlzMCbos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7dlzMCbos They talk about examples from patients in states where its already legal (under some circumstances).

sokoloff 10y ago

One concern is, what if the person doesn't really want to die but the "care"givers want their ordeal to be over, or want to collect an inheritance, or collect an inheritance before it's all gobbled up by end-of-life care? In genuine cases of wanting out, I support it, but I'm not sure how to design the right controls around it to be fully comfortable with it.

rev_bird 10y ago
I'm from the U.S., and I'm guessing you are too -- I wonder, in Europe, if "end-of-life" care bankrupts old people like it does here.
- notlisted 10y ago
  It won't. Socialized medicine works. Note: It probably doesn't just bankrupt old people here… I've seen whole families affected by last-ditch efforts to squeeze out a few more months. Second mortgages. College funds. It's horrifying. (live in US, from Europe)

naringas 10y ago

I think it's related to christian morality. They belive something along the lines of "God gave you your life and only Him can decide when it should end"

cmdrfred 10y ago
Pro-life.
- masklinn 10y ago
  Anti-choice.
Luc 10y ago
This is getting downvoted, but at least in Belgium it is mainly Christian organisations that opposed, and continue to oppose, the euthanasia laws.

danieltillett 10y ago

There is only one rational reason and that is to discourage the impulsive. Suicide is not something to be entered into lightly.

jacquesm 10y ago

It's mostly a vestige of religion. Life is considered sacred and it is not supposed to be your own choice whether you want to live or die but up to god in some form or other. This then became enshrined in law as well as in medical practice (though in medicine there has long been a recognition that not all life extending medical practice is compatible with medical ethics doctors are still bound by the laws of the land and in plenty of cases doctors that assisted with suicide have been charged with murder). Quite a few countries have now moved to the point where in the case of grave illness or pain you have the ability to request an end to your life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_euthanasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_euthanasia

lambdaphagy 10y ago

There are plenty of fathomable reasons why some people are against that, just as there are plenty of fathomable reasons why others are for it. Anyone who professes not to understand half of a debate might reconsider their confidence on the issue.

MichaelBurge 10y ago

Because then your kids could forge a signature on a fake letter to get your inheritance money. Because then companies that happen to profit from your death have an incentive to convince you that you should die, using manipulative advertising and marketing. Because then people who are highly depressed might kill themselves with assistance from a doctor, when an alternate route could cure them. Because then the doctor might forge evidence showing that you wanted to be killed and it could be hard for the police to track down. Maybe they only use the attack against certain high-reward targets. Because then somebody who is impulsive might agree to be killed when he would've regretted it later if he were still alive. I tend to be in favor of this for people who legitimately want to die, but there's something to be said for the simplicity of "The autopsy showed poison, so we have a murder case." I could be convinced to make it illegal if somebody found some really plausible attacks that could be used against me; and could be convinced to make it legal if we found and required a scientific test with a legally-enforcable chain-of-custody that proved I was in my right mind when I asked to be killed.

CaptainZapp 10y ago
Those are all valid points. But oddly enough none of them seems to be a problem in Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal since the 40s (as mentioned in the article). On a sidenote: You can write a "Patientenverfügung" (loosely transelated: a patient's will), in which you stipulate that you don't want to be kept alive artificially in case of grave illnes. This is respected by hospitals and doctors. Case in point was my mother, who had terminal cancer. The doctors gave her morphine to ease the pain and otherwise didn't do anything to prolong her suffering. She died in a dignified manner.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  We have "living wills" in the United States and they're the same thing. The controversial issue is active euthanasia, not passive euthanasia. Mostly, anyway.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  >Because then somebody who is impulsive might agree to be killed when he would've regretted it later if he were still alive. We wouldn't always know in such cases, and there's often no way to know what a dead person would have thought years later if they would have lived.

frogpelt 10y ago

You may find this amazing, but not everyone shares your world view. No one wants to suffer. And no one wants to see other people suffer. But the truth is suffering is a part of life. Some people I know and love have suffered their last few years of life. And other people I know and love have taken their own lives. My personal experience is that the individuals who allowed death to come on its terms, instead of rushing to that conclusion, left everyone around them with more strength, peace, happiness, and personal growth. The people who ended their life because they didn't want to suffer anymore left a wake of suffering and trouble around them when they went. It's unfathomable why you wouldn't see the difference.

Retric 10y ago
Not everyone suffers to the same extent or has family and close friends at the end. The goal should be a life worth living not a continuation of cellular activity. It's a failure of empathy to equate emotional pain that was going to happen anyway with the kind of pain drugs can't deal with. I really can't equate your stance to anything but sadism on a massive scale. Suffer, so I can avoid feeling bad for a little while and pretend the end is not so bad.
staticelf 10y ago
I don't find that amazing, because I knew it already. As I wrote in my original post: > People who are against letting people choose their own death is having a selfish and evil stance, there is no way to excuse that. I understand that people oppose such freedoms, but I find it to be selfish and evil. Just look what you wrote: > left everyone around them with more strength, peace, happiness, and personal growth. That is only proof of my original statement.
- frogpelt 10y ago
  Your stance is just as selfish and just as evil to many others.

DanielBMarkham 10y ago

Libertarian here, so I'm comfortable with people owning their own bodies and being solely responsible for what they do with it. Having said that, I'd like to make the case for keeping it illegal because I believe there's a strong case to be made. Killing yourself should be a unique, extraordinary event in both your life and the lives of those around you. We should never make a system out of killing people, because systems can be gamed. In a way, this is much the same discussion as the old "would you torture a terrorist to determine where a nuclear bomb was waiting to go off?" Yes. Yes I would. I would consider such an act to be horribly immoral, and I might regret it to the day I die, but yes, I would. Likewise I'd take my own life or help people I love take theirs -- but I would worry over whether I did the right thing or not. If I were a religious person, I might consider my act immoral. But I'd still do it. Once you create a system out of killing people -- people go in one side, forms get filled out, and dead people come out the other -- you've taken a step towards the state arbitrarily deciding who lives or dies based on its own system of value and not the individual's. So in a way, you give up much more in this fashion than if you simply outlawed it and never prosecuted. (Which is probably what happens 90% of the time in countries where assisted suicide is illegal.) So yeah, I'd torture the terrorist. But I'd raise holy hell for any system of government where torture was a accepted way of doing things. Good grief, can you imagine what just a little tweaking would do to a system like that? Speeding is illegal. If you want to speed on the way to the hospital because somebody you love is in danger? Speed. By all means, speed. I'll be the first person to protest any law enforcement person that tries to stop you. But speeding should probably still be illegal for systemic reasons not related at all to your loved one being ill.

the_ancient 10y ago
Libertarian Here... I challenge how you square your belief with libertarianism If you say it illegal for a person to commit suicide you are staking a claim to their life, you are saying you own them That is about as far from libertarianism as you can get
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  My stance is that I have that right. So do others. I made an argument that from a systemic standpoint, it's better to make illegal and never prosecute than it is to create a governmental machine around it. Please understand, I'm perfectly happy with it being legal. I'm simply trying to describe why there's a strong case for it remaining illegal (and un-prosecuted) You realize that we're not talking about people freely deciding what to do with themselves, right? What we're talking about is a bunch of new laws, committees, and processes where a person's life can be terminated, sometimes directly by the state. I'd think this is a much worse situation than simply having officials look the other way. If we were talking about removing all laws around what folks do with their lives, that'd be a different thing entirely. That's where we should be. But nobody is talking about that.

dominotw 10y ago

I recently saw an NPR debate about this Intelligence Squared Debate: Euthanasia Should be Legalised https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7dlzMCbos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7dlzMCbos They talk about examples from patients in states where its already legal (under some circumstances).