3 ms·

I thought it was like a pandoras box of slippery slope histories once these things come into being and are accepted. They morph into other cases that don't matc

I thought it was like a pandoras box of slippery slope histories once these things come into being and are accepted. They morph into other cases that don't match the clean and tidy first introduction/nice-first-impression cases but devolve into euthanasia and it's in your best interest to die sort of stuff. Have we seen expansions in euthanasia in countries that wound up adopting it where these initial provisions basically are eroded and replaced with more generous expansive allowances? I thought I read so much at some point somewhere, like Belgium allowing children to be able to request assisted suicide and things like that. Maybe I'm totally off here though.

dane-pgp 6y ago
Let me give some examples from Belgium, to show what sort of difficult scenarios emerge once countries start moving along this slippery slope. As the parent comment says, the law applies to children, and has even applied to a nine year old.[0] I don't think anyone believes that a child that young can meaningfully consent to a decision as significant as ending their own life, so obviously in practice the decision will be made by the parents, who will be influenced by the difficulty of potentially having to support a disabled child, financially and emotionally. Then there are questions of the judgement of medical professionals. A research paper found that "Almost nine out of ten [medical professionals] (89.1%) agreed that in the event of a serious (non‐lethal) neonatal condition, administering drugs with the explicit intention to end neonatal life was acceptable."[1] This suggests that doctors would approve the killing of newborns even without a terminal illness. Beyond the issue of the law applying to children, there are several controversial cases involving adults without terminal illnesses. For example, a man serving a life sentence was allowed to end his life due to his feeling of "anguish"[2], despite the country not allowing the death penalty for criminals. Another adult was given euthanasia due to their opinion about themselves after a sex change operation[3] (which was presumably also approved by medical professionals). Finally, a man requested euthanasia (which has been initially accepted) as a result of his dissatisfaction with his sexuality.[4] [0] https://allthatsinteresting.com/euthanasia-in-belgium https://allthatsinteresting.com/euthanasia-in-belgium [1] https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/aogs.13967?af=R https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/aogs.1... [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29209459 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29209459 [3] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/10346616/Belgian-killed-by-euthanasia-after-a-botched-sex-change-operation.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/10... [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36489090 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36489090
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > This suggests that doctors would approve the killing of newborns even without a terminal illness. Saying doctors would be OK with post-viability abortions in the case of a major (though still viable) birth defect does not at all "suggest" to me that they would be OK with the killing of newborns.
  - dane-pgp 6y ago
    To be clear, we're not talking about "post-viability abortions" here. The quote said "a serious (non‐lethal) neonatal condition, administering drugs with the explicit intention to end neonatal life", specifically referring to post-birth / newborn babies.

dane-pgp 6y ago

Let me give some examples from Belgium, to show what sort of difficult scenarios emerge once countries start moving along this slippery slope. As the parent comment says, the law applies to children, and has even applied to a nine year old.[0] I don't think anyone believes that a child that young can meaningfully consent to a decision as significant as ending their own life, so obviously in practice the decision will be made by the parents, who will be influenced by the difficulty of potentially having to support a disabled child, financially and emotionally. Then there are questions of the judgement of medical professionals. A research paper found that "Almost nine out of ten [medical professionals] (89.1%) agreed that in the event of a serious (non‐lethal) neonatal condition, administering drugs with the explicit intention to end neonatal life was acceptable."[1] This suggests that doctors would approve the killing of newborns even without a terminal illness. Beyond the issue of the law applying to children, there are several controversial cases involving adults without terminal illnesses. For example, a man serving a life sentence was allowed to end his life due to his feeling of "anguish"[2], despite the country not allowing the death penalty for criminals. Another adult was given euthanasia due to their opinion about themselves after a sex change operation[3] (which was presumably also approved by medical professionals). Finally, a man requested euthanasia (which has been initially accepted) as a result of his dissatisfaction with his sexuality.[4] [0] https://allthatsinteresting.com/euthanasia-in-belgium https://allthatsinteresting.com/euthanasia-in-belgium [1] https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/aogs.13967?af=R https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/aogs.1... [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29209459 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29209459 [3] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/10346616/Belgian-killed-by-euthanasia-after-a-botched-sex-change-operation.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/10... [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36489090 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36489090

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
> This suggests that doctors would approve the killing of newborns even without a terminal illness. Saying doctors would be OK with post-viability abortions in the case of a major (though still viable) birth defect does not at all "suggest" to me that they would be OK with the killing of newborns.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  To be clear, we're not talking about "post-viability abortions" here. The quote said "a serious (non‐lethal) neonatal condition, administering drugs with the explicit intention to end neonatal life", specifically referring to post-birth / newborn babies.