18 ms·

Spain: Parliament passes law legalizing assisted suicide

153 points by samizdis 6y ago

nicoburns 6y ago
Excellent. Hopefully the UK will be next, and it gets extended so tht it doesn't only cover terminally ill people. Luckily I'm still young and healthy so I've got plenty of time until I'll need this, but I'll be pretty upset if not available when I do.
- rjmorris 6y ago
  It's been hard enough to convince countries to legalize assisted suicide for people are terminally ill that I think we're unfortunately very far away from the entension to people who aren't. Aside from the religious angle, what are the biggest arguments against assisted suicide for people who aren't terminally ill?
  - cjdell 6y ago
    Parents might be talked into it by children who are eager to inherit their assets. When someone pointed this out to me it made me reconsider.
    - tpush 6y ago
      I mean, that can already happen, no? What difference does it make being able to commit legal suicide instead of 'illegal' suicide by downing some pills?
      - cjdell 6y ago
        I guess because one is technically murder and you'd have to do it yourself, whereas the other you can get someone else to do it and you'd get away scott free and with less guilt.
        tpush 6y ago
        Why wouldn't both be murder and the guilt just the same?
        JetAlone 6y ago
        They are both murder, but I think he's talking about legal guilt. If the assisted suicide you deniably talked your predecessor into was legal, you are legally guilty of no crime.
        lucb1e 6y ago
        As someone who moved to Germany, I feel like I understand this better now. Many people here a real stickler for rules even when they make absolutely no sense at all. Many seem to actually care whether a law was broken before they care to consider whether the thing itself is good regardless of legal status. Avoiding the feeling of legal guilt is probably a thing here more than I thought it could be.
    - alexashka 6y ago
      The only points this makes me reconsider is the legal right to murder your own children and having criteria for who gets to have children in the first place.
    - mariusor 6y ago
      That's why the decision to allow assisted suicide is taken by two separate medical professionals following two requests by a person in pain. I think it's safe to assume that said medics (who swore a hypocratic oath, no less) will not just hand those over to whomever asks.
  - melenaboija 6y ago
    When is time to legislate not much else than that in Spain, but religion (catholic) is an important asset in politics there. Conservative parties and catholic church feed back each other.
  - gotsa 6y ago
    Allowing anyone to end his life it's the same as stating that we fully own our ourselves. If we accept that axiom as valid then there is no moral argument against free market of organs nor consensual cannibalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes).
    - JetAlone 6y ago
      I was interested in selling a kidney to help a guy pay for life-saving surgery but found out it wasn't legal. Probably for good reason. I could donate instead though.
      - conductr 6y ago
        Interesting. Probably taking a leap here but now I’m imagining a scenario where this life-saving surgery guy is the buyer of your kidney and you’re bummed you couldn’t make money from it.
        JetAlone 6y ago
        Not sure what you mean exactly by this. Either way I wanted to give something to save a guy's life, didn't want the money as such.
      - JetAlone 6y ago
        I just realized this sentence could be fairly easily interpreted to mean I'm selling someone else's kidney haha. I wouldn't do that, as immoral of a person as I may be seen to be.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        I had thoughts like this too, but honestly, some slopes are indeed slippery. Once you normalize the practice of selling your own organs, the market will readjust - the value of your organs will become a part of your net worth, and you'll be pressured to sell them in situations where you'd prefer not to. It's one thing to have an option to donate your kidney to save someone's life, it's another when selling your kidney will become the only way most people can afford mortgage.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    > Aside from the religious angle, what are the biggest arguments against assisted suicide for people who aren't terminally ill? Suicide is a permanent action for sometimes temporary circumstances. Plenty of folks who attempted suicide—because they saw no way out of their current situation—and failed are glad they ended up failing.
    - rjmorris 6y ago
      But that's already true of unassisted suicide. With assisted suicide, at least the person will be required to see a practioner (in my version of it, anyway) who might be able to diagnose and treat/address the temporary circumstances.
      - throw0101a 6y ago
        > Batters said she’s heard from hundreds of Canadians who have concerns about the clause. Many have told her they’ve suffered from mental illness, and would have chosen to end their lives if the option had been available to them before they recovered. * https://ipolitics.ca/2021/03/17/assisted-dying-legislation-approaches-final-stages-with-senate-vote/ https://ipolitics.ca/2021/03/17/assisted-dying-legislation-a...
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      > Plenty of folks who attempted suicide—because they saw no way out of their current situation—and failed are glad they ended up failing. The counterpoint is also true though: there are people who live long and persistently miserable lives. To me that is even worse than a premature death (I'd much rather be dead than permanently miserable).
- coolspot 6y ago
  Unfortunately, in the US, people have to rely on 2nd amendment rights to have such option. Without guns, all other methods I know of are painful and non-instant: hanging, drug overdose, cutting veins, suffocation, what else? It’s just sad that terminally ill people have to use a method that will put stigma and shame on how their live ended, doing it in secret and with mess. Instead of a legal and graceful procedure, going away surrounded by family.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - brianwawok 6y ago
    The train hop is quiet common, but also a very unfair thing to do to the conductor.
  - zajio1am 6y ago
    > Without guns, all other methods I know of are painful and non-instant: Suffocation with inert gas (e.g. N_2) using mask with exhalation valve is safe, painless and leads to very fast loss of consciousness. Distress associated with suffocation is not caused by missing oxygen, but by excess CO_2, so it does not happen if a person can exhale freely. It sometimes happen in industrial accidents, people lose consciousness without noticing anything.
    - himujjal 6y ago
      Isnt that way too scientific and a long process to die? Guns are easy. One bullet in the head and goodbye world.
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        It's (relatively) long but painless. It would be hard to arrange, but only because it's illegal to provide such services. I dream of a day when such such services are provided by healthcare providers.
  - threeseed 6y ago
- mrec 6y ago
  With international travel becoming so accessible I'm kind of surprised that suicide tourism (akin to medical tourism) isn't more of a thing. I wonder if there's a tacit understanding that opening that door would have diplomatic consequences.
  - tremon 6y ago
    FAFAIK, this is possible in Switzerland. However, the same safeguards apply there: the patient has to make their case and a doctor must assent to the request.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
> Patients have to be Spanish citizens or legal residents and must be fully conscious when they request the procedures. > A request is to be submitted twice in writing, 15 days apart. It must be approved by two separate doctors and an evaluation body, according to AFP news agency. Given those requirements and safeguards, I'm having a difficult time understanding a rational argument against this law.
- grecy 6y ago
  Agree 100%. I recently lost my Mum to cancer, and while the end wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, it should have ended a day or two before it did. After battling for almost 3 years, there was no hope anymore. She couldn't eat or talk for two days, and on the last day wasn't lucid at all. In the proceeding years we had many, many conversations about death, and she was completely aware her cancer was a 100% death sentence. A friend watched his Dad suffer immeasurable pain for 6 months from bone cancer, and the final 2 weeks were inhuman. He was begging the hospital staff, but they couldn't. Three months after his Dad died, my friend committed suicide. NOT allowing assisted suicide for terminally ill people is cruel and THAT should be the crime.
  - ogig 6y ago
    I agree with you, people should have the right to decide about their own death. Sorry about your mother.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  I don’t think there’s quite enough information in the article to fully evaluate it. Depending on what the precise requirements are, what this “evaluation panel” involves, and how long the panel can take to make a decision, you could certainly have a rational objection there. But, overall, it at least seems pretty good. I have always been incensed that if I were terminally ill in most US states, the law would treat me worse than my dog. Laws like this are a huge step in the right direction, IMO. Edit: I’d be fully satisfied when the law allows me to specify when I want my own suffering ended via advance directive. It really shouldn’t be the burden of a terminally ill person to have to make those decisions at the end of their life.
Orochikaku 6y ago
I’m of the believe that people who are against assisted suicide have never had to provide end of life care to a person who died a painful death, riddled with disease and indescribable pain on the way out. Seeing the final days of my grandfathers life, who died of colon cancer, being robbed of his dignity and condemned to suffering for an agonising six months made me a staunch advocate of assisted suicide.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- camdenlock 6y ago
  Indeed. In my opinion, opposition to assisted suicide is an actively immoral stance precisely because of this sort of situation. It’s a complex topic, for sure, but also a rather morally clear one.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  Count me as one who has been through the ringer with a family member’s prolonged dying and opposes it.
  - riku_iki 6y ago
    What is your reasoning?
    - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
      (someone else answering) my reason for opposing it is that it creates opportunity for abuse, for example like pushing older relatives toward that decission because someone doesn't want to care for them.
      - kungito 6y ago
        So you can think of all the people suffering an inescapable and slow death and you want to force them to have to go through that because you are worried about a case of neglected older people who will get one more of many ways to commit suicide. Do you think those older people aren't talked into other stuff as we speak?
nynx 6y ago
It's strange to me that people try to fight against legalizing assisted suicide. If there's one thing a person should have the right to do, it's to decide whether they want to continue their life or not.
- superjan 6y ago
  Not to be snarky, but suicide itself is usually not forbidden. Legalizing assistence is a different thing.
  - mariusor 6y ago
    I think it would be tricky to determine a judicial punishment framework for people that commit suicide.
    - tremon 6y ago
      From http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5997&context=nclr http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5...: A person who committed suicide was punished at common law by burial in the public highway with a stake driven through his body and by forfeiture of his goods and chattels to the king.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  Vestigal Christianity, I think.
  - oleander73 6y ago
    That plus fear of death.
throwaway30934 6y ago
Quick reminder that religious people are completely on board with God letting children be born with incurable illnesses, suffer terribly for a few months, and die, instead of being born healthy; and that they will go to extreme mental contortions to justify such monstrous immorality. So it's unsurprising that they also think that everyone should suffer as much as possible before dying. I'm unconvinced.
kristopolous 6y ago
Somehow the idea that someone can be perfectly sane and not want to live as long as possible is inconceivable to people. They should really get over it. Just like those with different gender preferences they won't ever understand they will have to just take people's word that it's sincere and they're doing it of sound mind. The rationalizations I hear people use are really hollow to me, like someone claiming a gay man just hasn't met the right woman yet. It's fundamentally different. All of my friends who have taken their own lives struggled with it for years. I wish they weren't gone but I have to respect if after all therapy and help options were exhausted, they still were committed, then so be it. I wish they were here right now, of course I do. It fucking sucks. It's personally traumatizing but as my final act of friendship I was there to support them in their decisions. I had to sign off the release forms for my friend's ashes 6 years ago and drive up to santa barbara to give them to his mother. I remember sitting there in silence at her kitchen table with her when she said "we all knew it was the right thing."
- jfim 6y ago
  Sorry for your loss, hopefully they're in a better place now.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- wolfretcrap 6y ago
  It's because most people want to die are already dead so they can't vote show their support to this cause.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Shorel 6y ago
    This is something I was thinking about just reading this headline. In a hypotetical future, it is possible assisted suicide rates will be down just before elections and up after elections because a group of people have already decided on the suicide, and are delaying the procedure to be able to vote.
at_a_remove 6y ago
I have a rather metabolic disorder which will likely end in it being ... quite bad. An acquaintance opened up to me and revealed that a great deal of his watchfulness around me (I could not help but notice) stemmed from the fact that his mother died of what I have when he was just a teen. According to him, she spent the last decade of her life in the furthest room of the house, intermittently screaming and/or begging for death, so I can understand some of the lack of ease he exhibits: he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. While I'm aware of the various slippery slopes (and who might be greasing the plane), I can't help but think that a few people could have been spared quite a bit of suffering had euthanasia been available.
- JesseMReeves 6y ago
  It was immoral of this acquaintance to tell you such a graphic story if he knew about your condition. If he was truly compassionate he would have kept it to himself or formulated it more tactfully instead of putting this into your mind. Maybe he was abusive towards you.
  - at_a_remove 6y ago
    Hardly. I have been aware of how the condition turns out almost from the beginning. You see, one of the hallmarks of it is extreme abdominal pain, which easily eclipsed my broken bones or other items like having a gallbladder infection due to stones. I am told childbirth and having an appendix rupture also aren't as high up on the scale, although neither have happened to me. After a few of those episodes sans painkillers (and of course feeling like death would be preferable to continuation of that state) I went hunting for information since doctors are typically uninterested in pursuing the concerns of teens. Once I matched everything up, the medical literature was not shy about what the endgame looks like; after confirmation with some unlikely tests, I was largely on my own to deal with this, which meant more literature dives and even more unattractive stories. So when he relayed this story, my internal reaction was more of a nod, "yes, that's how it tended to go back then," a bit like hearing old stories of the agonizing, inevitable deaths of those who contracted rabies, because by then it was just another data point in a straight line. That's not immoral at all. Immoral, to me, is hiding this sort of thing from the people to whom it will happen, because if you do not know, you cannot plan around it. Being uninformed removes agency, and that's what we're discussing here -- do we allow other humans legal agency over their deaths, since they haven't any over their births?
someday_somehow 6y ago
Looks like the acceptance towards this is growing. If there was a service that wouldn't inconvenience anyone to manage my burial/cremation I would check out in a heartbeat.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  Are you okay? I can't tell if you are just generally in favor and would make use of it when the time comes, or if you want to die right now.
dsign 6y ago
I have nothing against this law of course. But I'm sad this makes it to the news, and it's a huge deal, and everybody is talking about it. We should really be making a huge deal about cancer and aging in general, and what our science can do to fix those things, and have the public know all the ins- and outs- of human physiology and cellular biology, and have parliaments around the world oil the way for better and more medical research and treatments. Take the fight to God.
DanielleMolloy 6y ago
It’s a complex subject, but these rulings are a direct result of our nihilist materialist pseudo-rational thinking and easily seem to get out of bounds. There unusually seem to be complex interpersonal relations involved too. Belgium allowed a 24yo with severe depression to “decide” for assisted suicide (this seems to be frequent, I’ve heard of a similar case of a student this year), and the Netherlands wants to allow childhood euthanasia soon (it is already allowed for those over 12). Decision makers seem to believe that they are rational and ruling out religious moral opinions on these subjects, however we seem to be gravitating towards the buddhist nihilist view that life is suffering, and that our reason to live is to end suffering by vanishing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sofixa 6y ago
  It's not the country that decides, it's the person and a panel of doctors, and there are requirements ( severe physical or mental issues). Point in case, there's a trial for murder on doctors that signed off on euthanasia for a woman which didn't fit the requirements - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-euthanasia-idUSKBN1ZC1FS https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-euthanasia-idUSKB...
- float4 6y ago
  > the Netherlands wants to allow childhood euthanasia soon Doctors in the Netherlands want this simply as a better alternative to palliative sedation, which is already legal in NL and many other countries in the world. Some children are terminally ill, and they are palliatively sedated when the parents and doctors agree that this is the best thing to do. The difference between palliative sedation and euthanasia in these cases is small, in the opinion of many Dutch people and doctors. Some quotes from a report[0] from the Dutch Association for Pediatrics, to give you an idea of what kind of cases we're talking about: > 'Well, yeah, he had a period during which he was screaming from pain: "Help me, just help me!" That was truly horrible to see, that someone is really hitting his own head while begging for help. That went on for three days. Every time I called for a nurse and they could only increase his medicine further. And at one point a nurse came and said bluntly: "yes madam, your child has a brain tumour. Of course he is in pain". Well, I thought: "okay I guess"'. > 'He didn't want to be sedated, because he said: "then I can no longer say whether I am in pain" [...] So we postponed that, but in the end he needed so much medicine that we asked him "do you want a little sleep medicine now?", and by then he wanted it". Child, 4 years old' [0] http://download.omroep.nl/nos/docs/280919_euthanasie.pdf http://download.omroep.nl/nos/docs/280919_euthanasie.pdf
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
This is the main reason I wild love to have a device that word release poison to my blood if I do not acknowledge my will to live every month. I am of course aware that it must be well tested and everything, it would be a relief to everyone. I am happy, wealthy to the point I want to be, living in a great country and a great place, have a great job and family. So I am far from being depressed, and yet I want that device to have the choice. I do not need anyone to explain why this is a bad idea.
- oleander73 6y ago
  I love this idea.
Darmody 6y ago
I'm going to copy/paste what I've posted in the other discussion about it. The left has been fighting for this over the last years. They finally managed to pass their law of death. Suicide on demand. Al this while palliative care is not given to those who need it. Only 40% of them do receive some kind of treatment to relieve their pain. Guess what the other 60% will think about now...
prirun 6y ago
A person may want to end their life for a variety of reasons, and not just because they are terminal or in excruciating pain. If a person is determined to "leave this world", for whatever reason, they are many ways to do it that no one can prevent: a gun shot, slashing their arms in the tub, gobbling medicine (not always reliable), etc. IMO, a person who wants to leave should be allowed to have controlled death without a mess or violence. I agree that counseling should be required, like maybe 2 sessions, but don't agree that anyone should have the power to deny assistance to die. It's my choice to leave or stay; all we are debating is whether I have to do something messy or can have a goodbye meeting with my family and have a peaceful death. My mom had pneumonia when she was 74. She had been very sick with rheumatoid arthritis for 30 years - bedridden in some of them, on crazy amounts of drugs for all of them, and for the last few years of her life, could only barely walk bent over a walker because of a failed hip replacement. Her body was shot, so when she went to the hospital for the pneumonia, she refused to let them treat her. If she took the oxygen mask off, she turned blue. The doctor wanted to send her home with an oxygen tank to lug around, but she could hardly walk as it was, so that was completely impractical. I guess she convinced the doctors she did want to leave, because they had a conference with us, said she was going to die, and allowed us to hasten it with morphine and Adavan. The shitty thing is, we (mainly me) had to go to the nurses station every 45 minutes to tell them she was "not comfortable" and get a morphine injection, and every hour do the same thing for Adavan. This went on for 9 hours, and it was only that short because they had her on 2 oxygen deliveries and I had to convince them that we couldn't keep doing this for 3-4 days. No one had eaten all day, my sisters are in the room crying their eyes out, and my mom had been unconscious for many hours. We knew what the end game was, but getting there was much more difficult that it needed to be. They could have easily put her on a drip for those 2 drugs to avoid adding to our suffering by forcing us to request drugs on some crazy schedule we had to track while our mother is dying. I am grateful they at least did it, but it was unnecessarily hard on us. There are also cases where a person should be able to write a document, like a living will, that says "Under these circumstances, I want to be euthanized: haven't been able to communicate for N days" etc. There may be cirumstances, like an accident, where a person is not able to go to counseling or is not able to confirm their wishes verbally. That doesn't mean they've changed their mind. If a document is written when the person is sane (maybe someone needs to notarized that), there is no reason to not honor their wishes at the appropriate time. We treat animals better than we treat people when it comes to end-of-life decisions, and that's a damn shame.

153 points by samizdis 6y ago

Excellent. Hopefully the UK will be next, and it gets extended so tht it doesn't only cover terminally ill people. Luckily I'm still young and healthy so I've got plenty of time until I'll need this, but I'll be pretty upset if not available when I do.

rjmorris 6y ago
It's been hard enough to convince countries to legalize assisted suicide for people are terminally ill that I think we're unfortunately very far away from the entension to people who aren't. Aside from the religious angle, what are the biggest arguments against assisted suicide for people who aren't terminally ill?
- cjdell 6y ago
  Parents might be talked into it by children who are eager to inherit their assets. When someone pointed this out to me it made me reconsider.
  - tpush 6y ago
    I mean, that can already happen, no? What difference does it make being able to commit legal suicide instead of 'illegal' suicide by downing some pills?
    - cjdell 6y ago
      I guess because one is technically murder and you'd have to do it yourself, whereas the other you can get someone else to do it and you'd get away scott free and with less guilt.
      - tpush 6y ago
        Why wouldn't both be murder and the guilt just the same?
        JetAlone 6y ago
        They are both murder, but I think he's talking about legal guilt. If the assisted suicide you deniably talked your predecessor into was legal, you are legally guilty of no crime.
        lucb1e 6y ago
        As someone who moved to Germany, I feel like I understand this better now. Many people here a real stickler for rules even when they make absolutely no sense at all. Many seem to actually care whether a law was broken before they care to consider whether the thing itself is good regardless of legal status. Avoiding the feeling of legal guilt is probably a thing here more than I thought it could be.
  - alexashka 6y ago
    The only points this makes me reconsider is the legal right to murder your own children and having criteria for who gets to have children in the first place.
  - mariusor 6y ago
    That's why the decision to allow assisted suicide is taken by two separate medical professionals following two requests by a person in pain. I think it's safe to assume that said medics (who swore a hypocratic oath, no less) will not just hand those over to whomever asks.
- melenaboija 6y ago
  When is time to legislate not much else than that in Spain, but religion (catholic) is an important asset in politics there. Conservative parties and catholic church feed back each other.
- gotsa 6y ago
  Allowing anyone to end his life it's the same as stating that we fully own our ourselves. If we accept that axiom as valid then there is no moral argument against free market of organs nor consensual cannibalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes).
  - JetAlone 6y ago
    I was interested in selling a kidney to help a guy pay for life-saving surgery but found out it wasn't legal. Probably for good reason. I could donate instead though.
    - conductr 6y ago
      Interesting. Probably taking a leap here but now I’m imagining a scenario where this life-saving surgery guy is the buyer of your kidney and you’re bummed you couldn’t make money from it.
      - JetAlone 6y ago
        Not sure what you mean exactly by this. Either way I wanted to give something to save a guy's life, didn't want the money as such.
    - JetAlone 6y ago
      I just realized this sentence could be fairly easily interpreted to mean I'm selling someone else's kidney haha. I wouldn't do that, as immoral of a person as I may be seen to be.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I had thoughts like this too, but honestly, some slopes are indeed slippery. Once you normalize the practice of selling your own organs, the market will readjust - the value of your organs will become a part of your net worth, and you'll be pressured to sell them in situations where you'd prefer not to. It's one thing to have an option to donate your kidney to save someone's life, it's another when selling your kidney will become the only way most people can afford mortgage.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > Aside from the religious angle, what are the biggest arguments against assisted suicide for people who aren't terminally ill? Suicide is a permanent action for sometimes temporary circumstances. Plenty of folks who attempted suicide—because they saw no way out of their current situation—and failed are glad they ended up failing.
  - rjmorris 6y ago
    But that's already true of unassisted suicide. With assisted suicide, at least the person will be required to see a practioner (in my version of it, anyway) who might be able to diagnose and treat/address the temporary circumstances.
    - throw0101a 6y ago
      > Batters said she’s heard from hundreds of Canadians who have concerns about the clause. Many have told her they’ve suffered from mental illness, and would have chosen to end their lives if the option had been available to them before they recovered. * https://ipolitics.ca/2021/03/17/assisted-dying-legislation-approaches-final-stages-with-senate-vote/ https://ipolitics.ca/2021/03/17/assisted-dying-legislation-a...
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    > Plenty of folks who attempted suicide—because they saw no way out of their current situation—and failed are glad they ended up failing. The counterpoint is also true though: there are people who live long and persistently miserable lives. To me that is even worse than a premature death (I'd much rather be dead than permanently miserable).
coolspot 6y ago
Unfortunately, in the US, people have to rely on 2nd amendment rights to have such option. Without guns, all other methods I know of are painful and non-instant: hanging, drug overdose, cutting veins, suffocation, what else? It’s just sad that terminally ill people have to use a method that will put stigma and shame on how their live ended, doing it in secret and with mess. Instead of a legal and graceful procedure, going away surrounded by family.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- brianwawok 6y ago
  The train hop is quiet common, but also a very unfair thing to do to the conductor.
- zajio1am 6y ago
  > Without guns, all other methods I know of are painful and non-instant: Suffocation with inert gas (e.g. N_2) using mask with exhalation valve is safe, painless and leads to very fast loss of consciousness. Distress associated with suffocation is not caused by missing oxygen, but by excess CO_2, so it does not happen if a person can exhale freely. It sometimes happen in industrial accidents, people lose consciousness without noticing anything.
  - himujjal 6y ago
    Isnt that way too scientific and a long process to die? Guns are easy. One bullet in the head and goodbye world.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      It's (relatively) long but painless. It would be hard to arrange, but only because it's illegal to provide such services. I dream of a day when such such services are provided by healthcare providers.
- threeseed 6y ago
mrec 6y ago
With international travel becoming so accessible I'm kind of surprised that suicide tourism (akin to medical tourism) isn't more of a thing. I wonder if there's a tacit understanding that opening that door would have diplomatic consequences.
- tremon 6y ago
  FAFAIK, this is possible in Switzerland. However, the same safeguards apply there: the patient has to make their case and a doctor must assent to the request.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

> Patients have to be Spanish citizens or legal residents and must be fully conscious when they request the procedures. > A request is to be submitted twice in writing, 15 days apart. It must be approved by two separate doctors and an evaluation body, according to AFP news agency. Given those requirements and safeguards, I'm having a difficult time understanding a rational argument against this law.

grecy 6y ago
Agree 100%. I recently lost my Mum to cancer, and while the end wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, it should have ended a day or two before it did. After battling for almost 3 years, there was no hope anymore. She couldn't eat or talk for two days, and on the last day wasn't lucid at all. In the proceeding years we had many, many conversations about death, and she was completely aware her cancer was a 100% death sentence. A friend watched his Dad suffer immeasurable pain for 6 months from bone cancer, and the final 2 weeks were inhuman. He was begging the hospital staff, but they couldn't. Three months after his Dad died, my friend committed suicide. NOT allowing assisted suicide for terminally ill people is cruel and THAT should be the crime.
- ogig 6y ago
  I agree with you, people should have the right to decide about their own death. Sorry about your mother.
pmiller2 6y ago
I don’t think there’s quite enough information in the article to fully evaluate it. Depending on what the precise requirements are, what this “evaluation panel” involves, and how long the panel can take to make a decision, you could certainly have a rational objection there. But, overall, it at least seems pretty good. I have always been incensed that if I were terminally ill in most US states, the law would treat me worse than my dog. Laws like this are a huge step in the right direction, IMO. Edit: I’d be fully satisfied when the law allows me to specify when I want my own suffering ended via advance directive. It really shouldn’t be the burden of a terminally ill person to have to make those decisions at the end of their life.

Orochikaku 6y ago

I’m of the believe that people who are against assisted suicide have never had to provide end of life care to a person who died a painful death, riddled with disease and indescribable pain on the way out. Seeing the final days of my grandfathers life, who died of colon cancer, being robbed of his dignity and condemned to suffering for an agonising six months made me a staunch advocate of assisted suicide.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
camdenlock 6y ago
Indeed. In my opinion, opposition to assisted suicide is an actively immoral stance precisely because of this sort of situation. It’s a complex topic, for sure, but also a rather morally clear one.
1123581321 6y ago
Count me as one who has been through the ringer with a family member’s prolonged dying and opposes it.
- riku_iki 6y ago
  What is your reasoning?
  - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
    (someone else answering) my reason for opposing it is that it creates opportunity for abuse, for example like pushing older relatives toward that decission because someone doesn't want to care for them.
    - kungito 6y ago
      So you can think of all the people suffering an inescapable and slow death and you want to force them to have to go through that because you are worried about a case of neglected older people who will get one more of many ways to commit suicide. Do you think those older people aren't talked into other stuff as we speak?

nynx 6y ago

It's strange to me that people try to fight against legalizing assisted suicide. If there's one thing a person should have the right to do, it's to decide whether they want to continue their life or not.

superjan 6y ago
Not to be snarky, but suicide itself is usually not forbidden. Legalizing assistence is a different thing.
- mariusor 6y ago
  I think it would be tricky to determine a judicial punishment framework for people that commit suicide.
  - tremon 6y ago
    From http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5997&context=nclr http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5...: A person who committed suicide was punished at common law by burial in the public highway with a stake driven through his body and by forfeiture of his goods and chattels to the king.
tomjen3 6y ago
Vestigal Christianity, I think.
- oleander73 6y ago
  That plus fear of death.

throwaway30934 6y ago

Quick reminder that religious people are completely on board with God letting children be born with incurable illnesses, suffer terribly for a few months, and die, instead of being born healthy; and that they will go to extreme mental contortions to justify such monstrous immorality. So it's unsurprising that they also think that everyone should suffer as much as possible before dying. I'm unconvinced.

kristopolous 6y ago

Somehow the idea that someone can be perfectly sane and not want to live as long as possible is inconceivable to people. They should really get over it. Just like those with different gender preferences they won't ever understand they will have to just take people's word that it's sincere and they're doing it of sound mind. The rationalizations I hear people use are really hollow to me, like someone claiming a gay man just hasn't met the right woman yet. It's fundamentally different. All of my friends who have taken their own lives struggled with it for years. I wish they weren't gone but I have to respect if after all therapy and help options were exhausted, they still were committed, then so be it. I wish they were here right now, of course I do. It fucking sucks. It's personally traumatizing but as my final act of friendship I was there to support them in their decisions. I had to sign off the release forms for my friend's ashes 6 years ago and drive up to santa barbara to give them to his mother. I remember sitting there in silence at her kitchen table with her when she said "we all knew it was the right thing."

jfim 6y ago
Sorry for your loss, hopefully they're in a better place now.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
wolfretcrap 6y ago
It's because most people want to die are already dead so they can't vote show their support to this cause.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Shorel 6y ago
  This is something I was thinking about just reading this headline. In a hypotetical future, it is possible assisted suicide rates will be down just before elections and up after elections because a group of people have already decided on the suicide, and are delaying the procedure to be able to vote.

at_a_remove 6y ago

I have a rather metabolic disorder which will likely end in it being ... quite bad. An acquaintance opened up to me and revealed that a great deal of his watchfulness around me (I could not help but notice) stemmed from the fact that his mother died of what I have when he was just a teen. According to him, she spent the last decade of her life in the furthest room of the house, intermittently screaming and/or begging for death, so I can understand some of the lack of ease he exhibits: he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. While I'm aware of the various slippery slopes (and who might be greasing the plane), I can't help but think that a few people could have been spared quite a bit of suffering had euthanasia been available.

JesseMReeves 6y ago
It was immoral of this acquaintance to tell you such a graphic story if he knew about your condition. If he was truly compassionate he would have kept it to himself or formulated it more tactfully instead of putting this into your mind. Maybe he was abusive towards you.
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  Hardly. I have been aware of how the condition turns out almost from the beginning. You see, one of the hallmarks of it is extreme abdominal pain, which easily eclipsed my broken bones or other items like having a gallbladder infection due to stones. I am told childbirth and having an appendix rupture also aren't as high up on the scale, although neither have happened to me. After a few of those episodes sans painkillers (and of course feeling like death would be preferable to continuation of that state) I went hunting for information since doctors are typically uninterested in pursuing the concerns of teens. Once I matched everything up, the medical literature was not shy about what the endgame looks like; after confirmation with some unlikely tests, I was largely on my own to deal with this, which meant more literature dives and even more unattractive stories. So when he relayed this story, my internal reaction was more of a nod, "yes, that's how it tended to go back then," a bit like hearing old stories of the agonizing, inevitable deaths of those who contracted rabies, because by then it was just another data point in a straight line. That's not immoral at all. Immoral, to me, is hiding this sort of thing from the people to whom it will happen, because if you do not know, you cannot plan around it. Being uninformed removes agency, and that's what we're discussing here -- do we allow other humans legal agency over their deaths, since they haven't any over their births?

someday_somehow 6y ago

Looks like the acceptance towards this is growing. If there was a service that wouldn't inconvenience anyone to manage my burial/cremation I would check out in a heartbeat.

lucb1e 6y ago
Are you okay? I can't tell if you are just generally in favor and would make use of it when the time comes, or if you want to die right now.

dsign 6y ago

I have nothing against this law of course. But I'm sad this makes it to the news, and it's a huge deal, and everybody is talking about it. We should really be making a huge deal about cancer and aging in general, and what our science can do to fix those things, and have the public know all the ins- and outs- of human physiology and cellular biology, and have parliaments around the world oil the way for better and more medical research and treatments. Take the fight to God.

DanielleMolloy 6y ago

It’s a complex subject, but these rulings are a direct result of our nihilist materialist pseudo-rational thinking and easily seem to get out of bounds. There unusually seem to be complex interpersonal relations involved too. Belgium allowed a 24yo with severe depression to “decide” for assisted suicide (this seems to be frequent, I’ve heard of a similar case of a student this year), and the Netherlands wants to allow childhood euthanasia soon (it is already allowed for those over 12). Decision makers seem to believe that they are rational and ruling out religious moral opinions on these subjects, however we seem to be gravitating towards the buddhist nihilist view that life is suffering, and that our reason to live is to end suffering by vanishing.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sofixa 6y ago
It's not the country that decides, it's the person and a panel of doctors, and there are requirements ( severe physical or mental issues). Point in case, there's a trial for murder on doctors that signed off on euthanasia for a woman which didn't fit the requirements - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-euthanasia-idUSKBN1ZC1FS https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-euthanasia-idUSKB...
float4 6y ago
> the Netherlands wants to allow childhood euthanasia soon Doctors in the Netherlands want this simply as a better alternative to palliative sedation, which is already legal in NL and many other countries in the world. Some children are terminally ill, and they are palliatively sedated when the parents and doctors agree that this is the best thing to do. The difference between palliative sedation and euthanasia in these cases is small, in the opinion of many Dutch people and doctors. Some quotes from a report[0] from the Dutch Association for Pediatrics, to give you an idea of what kind of cases we're talking about: > 'Well, yeah, he had a period during which he was screaming from pain: "Help me, just help me!" That was truly horrible to see, that someone is really hitting his own head while begging for help. That went on for three days. Every time I called for a nurse and they could only increase his medicine further. And at one point a nurse came and said bluntly: "yes madam, your child has a brain tumour. Of course he is in pain". Well, I thought: "okay I guess"'. > 'He didn't want to be sedated, because he said: "then I can no longer say whether I am in pain" [...] So we postponed that, but in the end he needed so much medicine that we asked him "do you want a little sleep medicine now?", and by then he wanted it". Child, 4 years old' [0] http://download.omroep.nl/nos/docs/280919_euthanasie.pdf http://download.omroep.nl/nos/docs/280919_euthanasie.pdf

BrandoElFollito 6y ago

This is the main reason I wild love to have a device that word release poison to my blood if I do not acknowledge my will to live every month. I am of course aware that it must be well tested and everything, it would be a relief to everyone. I am happy, wealthy to the point I want to be, living in a great country and a great place, have a great job and family. So I am far from being depressed, and yet I want that device to have the choice. I do not need anyone to explain why this is a bad idea.

oleander73 6y ago
I love this idea.

Darmody 6y ago

I'm going to copy/paste what I've posted in the other discussion about it. The left has been fighting for this over the last years. They finally managed to pass their law of death. Suicide on demand. Al this while palliative care is not given to those who need it. Only 40% of them do receive some kind of treatment to relieve their pain. Guess what the other 60% will think about now...

prirun 6y ago

A person may want to end their life for a variety of reasons, and not just because they are terminal or in excruciating pain. If a person is determined to "leave this world", for whatever reason, they are many ways to do it that no one can prevent: a gun shot, slashing their arms in the tub, gobbling medicine (not always reliable), etc. IMO, a person who wants to leave should be allowed to have controlled death without a mess or violence. I agree that counseling should be required, like maybe 2 sessions, but don't agree that anyone should have the power to deny assistance to die. It's my choice to leave or stay; all we are debating is whether I have to do something messy or can have a goodbye meeting with my family and have a peaceful death. My mom had pneumonia when she was 74. She had been very sick with rheumatoid arthritis for 30 years - bedridden in some of them, on crazy amounts of drugs for all of them, and for the last few years of her life, could only barely walk bent over a walker because of a failed hip replacement. Her body was shot, so when she went to the hospital for the pneumonia, she refused to let them treat her. If she took the oxygen mask off, she turned blue. The doctor wanted to send her home with an oxygen tank to lug around, but she could hardly walk as it was, so that was completely impractical. I guess she convinced the doctors she did want to leave, because they had a conference with us, said she was going to die, and allowed us to hasten it with morphine and Adavan. The shitty thing is, we (mainly me) had to go to the nurses station every 45 minutes to tell them she was "not comfortable" and get a morphine injection, and every hour do the same thing for Adavan. This went on for 9 hours, and it was only that short because they had her on 2 oxygen deliveries and I had to convince them that we couldn't keep doing this for 3-4 days. No one had eaten all day, my sisters are in the room crying their eyes out, and my mom had been unconscious for many hours. We knew what the end game was, but getting there was much more difficult that it needed to be. They could have easily put her on a drip for those 2 drugs to avoid adding to our suffering by forcing us to request drugs on some crazy schedule we had to track while our mother is dying. I am grateful they at least did it, but it was unnecessarily hard on us. There are also cases where a person should be able to write a document, like a living will, that says "Under these circumstances, I want to be euthanized: haven't been able to communicate for N days" etc. There may be cirumstances, like an accident, where a person is not able to go to counseling or is not able to confirm their wishes verbally. That doesn't mean they've changed their mind. If a document is written when the person is sane (maybe someone needs to notarized that), there is no reason to not honor their wishes at the appropriate time. We treat animals better than we treat people when it comes to end-of-life decisions, and that's a damn shame.