4 ms·

Real story is even more horrific than just euthanasia. I think that to an extent the click bait value takes priority when it gets to the media. Whatever makes p

Real story is even more horrific than just euthanasia. I think that to an extent the click bait value takes priority when it gets to the media. Whatever makes people click on it.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
I don't agree. I would be vastly more horrified to learn that a minor was euthanized -- that an institution, in compliance with the law, put a young girl to death as a consequence of her being sexually abused. That smacks of "Let's not bother to go after pedophiles. Their fine. Let's just start putting their victims to death to conveniently sweep this under the rug." That's far worse than the horrifying stuff going on in the Catholic Church where a grown man can rape and impregnate his 9 year old step daughter and the church says he's all good, but the girl was excommunicated for getting an abortion to protect her life in the face of carrying twins while just a tiny child herself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Brazilian_girl_abortion_case https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Brazilian_girl_abortion... Sex crimes are particularly hard to deal with. People sometimes say they would like the death sentence for rape, but if you do that, you can count on rape victims being routinely murdered to silence them and protect the life of the rapist. This is a hard, hard problem to solve. I would be terrified to learn that the Dutch government, which has a positive reputation globally for it's track record on women's rights, was fine with putting a child to death because grown men raped her. I cannot possibly overstate how deeply dystopian and terrible that news would be.
rndgermandude 7y ago
Agreed. Her having to kill herself by refusing nutrition, dying of thirst and starvation, because society decided it knows better than her whether she should live or not, that's truly horrifying. To me it sounds like she was a terminally ill person: they tried everything for years to "fix" her problem, but failed completely and the condition even worsened. She wasn't out of her mind and had a temporarily crisis, got help and regretted her previous suicide attempts; she had the goal of ending her suffering by ending her life for a long time, after having seen all the "help" others offered not working at all, she regretted the previous attempts failed, and was determined to try again and again until it worked. And for a long time, she had to live in agony, just like a terminal cancer patient in countries without assisted suicide (most of them), was denied a way out repeatedly (not just the petition for euthanasia, but her failed suicide attempts that probably failed because of intervention of other people), and ultimately killed herself using one of the worst, horrifying, agonizing suicide methods imaginable, because that's what was available to her with other better options having been taken away already. The thirst and hunger, and feeling your body slowly break down, over days, must have been excruciating, and yet she thought that was better than continuing to live her life in the constant dread and agony she was in. There certainly are a huge number of suicidal (at one point) people who are in temporary crisis, or have conditions that can be managed and improved (e.g. bipolar people often report that medication does help), but this wasn't that. This was us telling the cancer patient that they gonna suffer and wither and eventually die, with no hope for things to change, but no you cannot just end it now because it would make us feel bad about ourselves somehow, fuck you for even suggesting that.

Real story is even more horrific than just euthanasia. I think that to an extent the click bait value takes priority when it gets to the media. Whatever makes people click on it.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I don't agree. I would be vastly more horrified to learn that a minor was euthanized -- that an institution, in compliance with the law, put a young girl to death as a consequence of her being sexually abused. That smacks of "Let's not bother to go after pedophiles. Their fine. Let's just start putting their victims to death to conveniently sweep this under the rug." That's far worse than the horrifying stuff going on in the Catholic Church where a grown man can rape and impregnate his 9 year old step daughter and the church says he's all good, but the girl was excommunicated for getting an abortion to protect her life in the face of carrying twins while just a tiny child herself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Brazilian_girl_abortion_case https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Brazilian_girl_abortion... Sex crimes are particularly hard to deal with. People sometimes say they would like the death sentence for rape, but if you do that, you can count on rape victims being routinely murdered to silence them and protect the life of the rapist. This is a hard, hard problem to solve. I would be terrified to learn that the Dutch government, which has a positive reputation globally for it's track record on women's rights, was fine with putting a child to death because grown men raped her. I cannot possibly overstate how deeply dystopian and terrible that news would be.

rndgermandude 7y ago

Agreed. Her having to kill herself by refusing nutrition, dying of thirst and starvation, because society decided it knows better than her whether she should live or not, that's truly horrifying. To me it sounds like she was a terminally ill person: they tried everything for years to "fix" her problem, but failed completely and the condition even worsened. She wasn't out of her mind and had a temporarily crisis, got help and regretted her previous suicide attempts; she had the goal of ending her suffering by ending her life for a long time, after having seen all the "help" others offered not working at all, she regretted the previous attempts failed, and was determined to try again and again until it worked. And for a long time, she had to live in agony, just like a terminal cancer patient in countries without assisted suicide (most of them), was denied a way out repeatedly (not just the petition for euthanasia, but her failed suicide attempts that probably failed because of intervention of other people), and ultimately killed herself using one of the worst, horrifying, agonizing suicide methods imaginable, because that's what was available to her with other better options having been taken away already. The thirst and hunger, and feeling your body slowly break down, over days, must have been excruciating, and yet she thought that was better than continuing to live her life in the constant dread and agony she was in. There certainly are a huge number of suicidal (at one point) people who are in temporary crisis, or have conditions that can be managed and improved (e.g. bipolar people often report that medication does help), but this wasn't that. This was us telling the cancer patient that they gonna suffer and wither and eventually die, with no hope for things to change, but no you cannot just end it now because it would make us feel bad about ourselves somehow, fuck you for even suggesting that.