If you were required to be an organ donor, you’d save lives while setting yourself free. You’ll also give someone else a chance at taking the spot you had at work and your apartment.
Depends why. In Canada we have MAID which allows it under specific medical circumstances. It’s controversial, but quickly becoming more popular.
I think something like 5% of our deaths last year were MAID
Voluntary assisted dying (VAD), is legal in all Australian states except the Northern Territory. It was first legalised in 2017 after over 60 failed bills.
The person must have a disease or illness that is advanced, progressive, and expected to cause death within a certain time frame, must be experiencing intolerable suffering and must meet the eligibility criteria for their state.
My state has a ‘gag law’ that prohibits medical staff initiating a conversation about voluntary assisted dying with a patient.
It’s not a situation that anybody ever wants to be in, but knowing that should the worst happen, relief is possible can be a big comfort.
Voluntary euthanasia would benefit the person. People shouldn’t be forced to live just because society says so and people have been indoctrinated to believe that they should have a say in somebody else’s life.
People commit suicide in the most horrific ways and euthanasia can be a beautiful way to leave the flesh cage of pain. Imagine instead of jumping off a building, you get to sit and watch a sunset over a beautiful landscape. Imagine instead of suffering through cancer or some incurable disease until you get to “palliative care”, you can leave this earthly plane on your own time, without pain and with your loves ones around you.
Of course a rigorous but quick procedure should exist to ensure that the decision is your own without outside pressures. It should be relatively quick so that in cases where your mental capacities start deteriorating, that you aren’t reject because they took too long to make a decision and you are now mentally incapable of answering questions.
Benefit to society? Fuck that. Your body, your choice.
A distant family member took care to avoid his family discovering his remains. But someone does the discovering and if your end is violent and messy, now you’re inflicting that violence on someone else.
Having a way out means a peaceful end, a clear choice, minimal violence and mess, the whoever “discovers you” is prepared for it. Sparing a passer by or first responder, along with your loved ones, from the trauma is a value to society, so there’s that
Yep, that’s true. People who kill themselves in public places can traumatise bystanders. Train operators who hit suicide victims don’t get away without a mental scar.
I was in one of those trains. I never found out whether it was intentional but my train hit someone on a bridge known to be a shortcut for homeless. They took great care I helping us transfer to another train such that we couldn’t see anything. I really hope that driver was eventually ok
I agree with yoy, but further: I think that benefits to individuals are benefits to society.
Billionaires count as individuals and benefits to them don’t necessary benefit the society.
I disagree. I believe voluntaryism (essentially the non-aggression principle) would make the world better, and that must include every person. Perhaps a lot of how a billionaire acts would also need to change to fall within voluntaryism - it depends on the individual person. But regardless, I think that within a voluntary framework if someone wanted to kill themselves, they should have that right - and that would benefit society as a whole.
I guess this question has to be looked at from multiple dimensions.
From a purely economical and short-term perspective, maybe yes. Every human not contributing to society at an at least average level, is consuming ressources and driving up the costs. No matter if it’s due to illness, disability, depression, age, weakness, missing intelligence etc.
From a social perspective, such a program quickly can turn into a nightmare: First of all, everyone would be under pressure. If you’re not a constant top performer, you’d feel like a burden on society. And the bar to be a top performer would constantly rise as more and more people on the ‘lower end’ decide to end their lives.
Second, it’s impossible to quantify the value of a person holistically. People can provide no direct economic value and still be an important member of society. Like emotionally supporting others, being loved, providing jobs etc.
Furthermore - in a society where at some point the ‘weak’ are expected to ‘voluntarily’ end their lives, people would be constantly scared. No one would be willing to take any risks because getting injured, getting a depression etc. would be like an implicit death penalty. This would again lead to devastating effects on economy.
I personally think that everyone should be allowed to end their lives if they really deeply want it. But this should never be expected, actively promoted or pushed for. And I think it should involve at least a consultation with a medical professional to avoid hasty decisions due to a temporary crisis.
I personally think that everyone should be allowed to end their lives if they really deeply want it. But this should never be expected, actively promoted or pushed for. And I think it should involve at least a consultation with a medical professional to avoid hasty decisions due to a temporary crisis.
I mean, yes, but I really don’t think anyone is arguing for the opposite when talking about legal euthanasia and I find it disingenuous to even suggest it. Let’s not forget that almost anyone can commit suicide regardless of it being legal or medically assisted and this has been the case and will be the case for the entirety of human history. Look at Japan and similar countries/societies where the cultural and societal pressures already have the consequences you described without it being legal.
Arguing for legal euthanasia is really just saying that people should have a safer, more informed and more dignified option if they really intend to make that decision, and guaranteeing that even the people who currently can’t end their lives on their own can still exercise that right if they want to. If you want to prevent pointless suicides the right way to do it isn’t to take away the possibility entirely, it’s making sure that society doesn’t give people reasons to want to kill themselves.
EDIT: I’ve just realized that I initially misread OP’s question which specifically asks about “voluntary” euthanasia. The comment I’m replying to is more relevant to the original discussion than my response. Still can’t shake off the feeling that speaking about something like this even purely hypothetically can only do more harm than good in current times, as it’s very easy to imagine that once the concept of “voluntary euthanasia” begins floating around, people who want to argue in bad faith against legal euthanasia will just conflate the two to make the rational side look like a death cult.
These arguments are kind of dripping in slippery slope fallacy. That’s a potential outcome but by no means the only one. I’d hazard that’s a pretty worst case interpretation. I think your average person doesn’t evaluate themselves solely through the lens of economic value. Capitalismwould nudge people toward your slope, but I don’t think humans would totally cooperate with the effort.
Since you mentioned it - organ donation should be opt out, not opt in. It wouldn’t even be controversial, everybody still has freedom of choice.
Edit: I’m really curious what those downvoting me are objecting to. At least leave a comment or something!
We have it half way in between in NL: If you don’t opt out of organ donation, they will register: “Did not object to donation”. Without a definite yes, close family could still opt you out (after you lose the ability to share your thoughts) if they feel strongly against donating. With a definite yes, that option is also no longer available.
I think the full “opt-out” way should be fine too, if you really feel strongly against sharing working organs, you have the option to not do it, so no one is forced to do anything, and with opt-out the amount of organs available will be much larger, saving lives.
