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Thinking about individual cases I’ve heard of during my time in NL (one being relatively close, a young depressed student) is what has lead me to the opinion th
by DanielleMolloy 6y ago
Thinking about individual cases I’ve heard of during my time in NL (one being relatively close, a young depressed student) is what has lead me to the opinion that the floodgates have indeed been opened - which is what people have been warning about.
I’m otherwise not sure how you perceive me right now, but you might be attacking your straw man.
The goal of palliative care is increasing the quality of a dying person’s life with dignity and as little pain as possible, and allow them to make the best of the time that is left to them. Instead of opening euthanasia floodgates that just lead to difficult individual situations (such as not wanting to be a burden to one’s family, a very common feeling) I do believe we need more research in this direction.
- tremon 6y agoTo be honest, I perceive you as a zealous idealist that refuses to acknowledge that the world isn't perfect, and instead chooses to oppose any form of legal empathy with mere handwaving about moral conundrums. I have no interest in debating someone who thinks that "floodgates" are a convincing argument.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- float4 6y agoIn the PDF I linked to parents state how they stood in the hallway of the ICU, far away from their 3 year old daughter, because they could not handle her screams any longer. The doctors had advised them to go away. They were not with her when she died. Doctors have experienced firsthand that palliative care isn't always possible in the last phase of life. But nonetheless the commenter wants "more research in [that] direction", and talks about "increasing the quality of a dying person's life". So yeah, whatever. I'm glad most people in my country know better.
- DanielleMolloy 6y agoMany people in your or your neighboring country now seem to be very surprised by cases opponents have warned about before, such as Tine Nys, or this grandma with dementia who was opposing the jab and had to be kept down by her family until her last moment. The family members likely feel confident and „rational“ about their murder because the procedure was backed by the local public discourse. (A cynic may see parallels to widow burning, which is also backed by some local clan discourse.) With such cases in public awareness I don’t understand how the cases you translated here for us (thanks for that, btw) don’t lead you to the conclusion that there must be more research into palliative care, and instead that one should be allowed to put an end to a human life that is more suffering than living. You list graphic descriptions of situations where the first is not possible yet so the latter would likely have to apply, and I understand that - as I said, I’m aware of the complexity. But improving palliative care with dignity should still be the primary route. That your legal floodgates are open now may prohibit a focus on palliative care research since it seemingly has already changed your national discourse quite a bit - which is another issue opponents have warned about. The Dutch / Belgian (and perhaps Canadian) discourse on euthanasia is an outlier in the world, and being on the outlier side is not automatically a good thing. It will derail even further and weaken more boundaries, and change how people act or feel are expected to act.
- DanielleMolloy 6y agoYeah, don’t worry too much about the suicidal depressed guy, just open up an easy legal route to painless suicide with a ‚rationality’ flavor for him so that he can „ ‚decide‘ to end his suffering“. And tell all his friends (half of them depressed too) that ‚this is just a rational decision for a depressed person to make’. Don’t worry too much about implications, that’s just „unrealistic perfectionism“. Just put up your very confident face.