#Assisted dying

[ayeforscotland]

I feel like if there’s one bill that shouldn’t be fast-tracked through parliament, it should be the one about assisted dying.

Source.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Quebec residents diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease will soon be able to apply for medical assistance in dying (MAID) starting Oct. 30, allowing them to make the choice before losing their decision-making capacity. However, some doctors say the healthcare system is unprepared and can’t handle the increase in requests. “I don’t think most of the doctors or nurse practitioners or health care professionals will be ready,” said palliative medicine Dr Mathieu Moreau in a recent interview. Quebec is moving forward with the change more than a year after changing provincial law knowing that the federal government has yet to alter the criminal code.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[stanestreet]

As a November 2024 report by the think tank the Other Half puts it, what are described as “mercy killings” are “very frequently the violent domestic homicide of elderly, infirm or disabled women by men”. Women are the majority of unpaid carers – 80 per cent, according to the King’s Fund. But, strangely, they appear much less likely than men to become “mercy killers”.

This discrepancy is impossible to separate from the wider belief in society that women are a kind of property owned by men. It is seen as a woman’s natural obligation to look after a man, but when a man has to look after a woman, it becomes an unreasonable imposition.

Hence the sympathy a man can draw on if he kills his wife while feeling overwhelmed by her needs. Mungall claimed to have seen an expression in his wife’s eyes “like an animal who needs to be put down and cannot say it” – a comparison that makes him the owner and her the pet.

Are we really supposed to believe that a man who feels that way about his wife is incapable of pressuring her into applying for a medically assisted suicide? In response to concerns from critics of the bill about this possibility, supporters of the bill have pointed to what they regard as its extensive safeguards. Simon Opher MP, a former GP and a member of the bill committee, has even said it is “judging doctors harshly to say that they will not spot coercion”.

Personally, I find Opher’s statement less reassuring and more indicative of a disturbingly blasé attitude to the possibility of abuse. In the limited window of a consultation, it is all too easy for a doctor to miss the signs. A YouGov survey for the charity SafeLives found that half of healthcare professionals felt unable to identify domestic violence. Sometimes, the doctor in question might even be actively untrustworthy: think of Harold Shipman, whose victims were predominantly elderly women.

The more common scenario, though, is the patient who, through lengthy cruelty and coercion from a partner or carer, becomes genuinely convinced that she (or sometimes he) is a burden who would be better off dead. Such a person may even refuse treatment, causing a curable disease to become terminal and placing them within the purview of the bill.

Legislators should be profoundly alert to this danger. Left unaddressed, it could place the state in the grotesque position of becoming a lawful accomplice to abusers. Yet unaddressed it remains. Of the nearly 50 individuals who gave oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee, not one was an expert in male violence or coercive control. (Jane Monckton Smith, an academic who studies femicide, was called but unable to attend; the committee did not attempt to find a substitute for her.)

From the start, the Terminally Ill Adults Bill has been a rush job – in the words of one former Labour adviser, “a quick-and-dirty policy development process that wouldn’t be close to good enough for 99 per cent of the laws made on our behalf”. If it becomes law, Labour risks turning the healthcare system into an executioner for those most in need of protection.

How the assisted dying bill could unleash male violence

[bushylez]

i think we need to talk about assisted suicide more. i find its highly stigmatized and it shouldn’t be. there are so many treatment resistant illnesses and people have the right to choose when their lives shall end, and it should be done in the safest and easiest way

[jameslmartello]

[pointless-letters]

Daily Express readers having a completely normal and in no way absolutely bananas reaction to the General Election result

[northern-punk-lad]

I honestly don’t think we talk about it enough but the Canadian government has done so much damage to the assisted dying movement worldwide

[hogwartsthenextgeneration]

*ALL OF THE YES OPTIONS WOULD INCLUDE THE REQUIRED PSYCH AND HEALTH EVALUATION*

It would be great if you could give more of an in depth opinion in the comments and if possible include where you are from.

Thank you!

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A man who says he suffers from chronic and worsening mental health issues is among those launching a court challenge of the federal government’s assisted dying law, which excludes people suffering solely from a mental disorder. An application filed by Dying with Dignity in Ontario Superior Court on Monday argues that it is discriminatory to bar people with mental disorders from being eligible for an assisted death when it is available to people who suffer physically. The organization is asking the court to immediately quash the mental-health exclusion. Plaintiff John Scully said going to court is his last hope.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[selkiesstories]

There's something I'd really like to ask the supporters of the UK assisted death bill: how can you seriously believe that this time will be different? "Euthanasia", "medical aid in dying", "right to die", so many circumlocutions for legalization of murder i.e. the extrajudicial premeditated killing of one human by another.

Laws of this sort never result in a societal net positive; they are inevitably abused and applied beyond their original form. Supporters of this law know this, and they also know which populations are disproportionately effected by those abuses. The disabled. The chronically ill. The elderly. The homeless. The mentally ill. The ones who find it difficult to advocate for themselves.

And what assurances do the supporters of this bill offer that this time will be different? Nothing. How can they? Can they promise that truly that see the value of each individual? No, they've cut funding so the elderly must shiver. Do they lay claim to a healthcare system with exemplary care for the chronically ill or the dying? Of course not, good palliative care nullifies the justification for medicalized killing vis-à-vis dignity and pain relief. The promise that this time will be different? What astounding arrogance, to set a forest ablaze and then claim the ability to control the inferno.

So, what makes this bill different?

[stillnaomi]

people using the disabled as a weapon against the assisted dying bill need to leave us out of it. 78 percent of disabled people in the UK support assisted dying being made available. the main problem with the current bill is that it's limited to the terminally ill, and doesn't provide for anyone else whose condition makes life unbearable. nobody should be forced to live in unbearable pain. so argue for safeguards if you want, but don't use the disabled as an excuse for trying to force others to live in agony. most of the disabled disagree with you

[anglocatholicboyo]

In Canada in 2015, 1 in 50 deaths were caused by assisted suicide. By 2020, that rate had doubled - *doubled*, to 1 in 25. If we accept that you can only 'know' about 150 people at once, then that would mean each person would know 6 people who died by assisted suicide.

Faced with these numbers, are we actually expected to believe that before Canada legalised assisted suicide, there were really that many people who were in such intolerable and untreatable pain that they were just itching to die early? I doubt it. I think it's more likely that where assisted suicide is legalised, attitudes towards suicide and the sanctity of life change for the worse.

This is why I object to the term 'assisted dying', which I regard as an insidious euphemism. This issue is not separable from the problem of suicide more broadly in society. The rates of suicide in the Netherlands have only increased since that country legalised assisted suicide, compare 8.3 suicides per 100,000 deaths in 2007 with 11.3 per 100,000 in 2017. The 'sanctity of life' argument is not just religionese, it's backed up by the facts.

Opponents of assisted suicide, like myself, talk about Canada and the Netherlands and Belgium so much that even I think we begin to sound like a broken record, but I think this is warranted. These countries are only the most extreme examples, but out of the 19 countries which have legalised assisted suicide, nearly all of them have expanded the eligibility criteria beyond the supposdely robust raft of safeguards originally promised.

Are we really so naïve as to think that it can't possibly happen here? This is a country which voted to leave the EU, after all. Given what's at stake, I don't for a moment trust us to get this right.

[nando161mando]

"I can appreciate why assisted dying may not be the right decision for all, like abortion. However, this legislation still limits people’s right to choose. We should also be deeply suspicious of any process that requires the approval of two doctors and a judge."

https://freedomnews.org.uk/2024/11/28/its-my-party-and-ill-die-if-i-want-to/

[nightmaretour]

If you think Dignity in Dying are going to stop pushing now that they've got the assisted dying bill through, you clearly haven't researched into the core values of the group and its founders. They aren't done. They may give a year or two to let the dust settle and let people get used to it and forget about all of the protests, but then they'll be back. They want to broaden its scope to disabled people, that was ALWAYS the plan.

[tattoos4mnd]

Autumnal barn owl

[captaindibbzy]

They're talking about assisted dying on the news and my opinion on it comes down to: it is impossible to keep people truly safe from forced euthanasia as long as the safety net for the vulnerable has holes. As long as you are relying on private money, and family, and free labour to catch and make up failings of the state there will always be people who are pushing for death of the inconvenient, and the unloved, and the undesired. It will always end up killing people who should not die because death is cheeper than living.