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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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This feels very click-baity. As far as I can tell, the assisted suicide law is being extended to include people in unbearable pain from mental health problems, not just physical ones. Because substance abuse is classified as a mental health problem, people with drug addictions would have the right to request assisted suicide under this extension to the law.
The objections being raised speak to the same fears many disabled people have about legalising assisted suicide: that people struggling with their health might be, or feel, pressured to end it for the convenience of others, not because it is the best thing for themselves. I assume that the existing law attempts to address this properly, with safeguards against external pressures.
Assisted suicide is most valuable for people who do not have the physical capacity to do it themselves, and do not want to put a loved one at risk of a murder charge. In practice, most people with a serious drug problem can quite easily end it themselves if they want to. Access to assisted suicide doesn't seem particularly likely to change much, except perhaps offer a more peaceful, dignified death for those who want it anyway.
This article seems to be pushing the conservative narrative. They make a leap from mental health to eugenics, which is a stretch. I call BS
Denying the people the right to die with dignity is a sick perversion of morals.
Vice isn't exactly a reputable news source.
Sort of, but it's basically state assisted suicide not because of terminal illness, or horrific physical impairment. It's for people with who are depressed, or otherwise mentally ill, including addicts.
Yes, I know they say they're safeguards and assessments, and that it's for people that treatment has failed, but who knows how that'll actually be implemented, or practically be enforced.
Chronic depression and your wife just divorced you? You're in luck, the state can help end your pain, permanently.
Lose your home and job because of your addiction? We'll kill you, no problem.
Should they be allowed to kill themselves? Sure, I don't think suicide should be illegal, but extending state sanctioned assisted suicide to a junkie, who's bottoming out, or someone with chronic depression, seems like the pendulum swinging way way way to far outside what should be acceptable for this type of state intervention.
But I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the nuances of this law, or how it will be implemented, just proving my take on the information I read in the article.
It's not an easy one, at all. My answer is the same as that for severely physically disabled people who may feel pressured for reasons external to themselves. And that is funding. People must have the support they need, whether it's professional care for support with daily living, or adequate treatment programmes, or secure housing from which to rebuild a liveable life.
That is not the world we live in, sadly. I understand why people fear that assisted suicide could be used to disappear a problem by a heartless state, and it's a reasonable fear, no matter how good the original intentions. This law can only be a good one if real safeguards are in place, with generous collective provision for those of us who find ourselves struggling for whatever reason.
Fucking up a suicide can make your life so much fucking worse than it was before you decidee to end things, and quite possibly less likely to be able to attempt it again. I'd rather people use their fear of those scenarios to fight for better social support networks and mental health services, because right now what we have is atrocious. I've chosen life, but because I lost ALL of my support networks and the trauma that left me with, its been 7 years since that incident and I've struggled to be able to maintain a job or a community, losing job after job and friend group after friend group is hard enough as it is (while I watch my debt spiral) if I hadnt CHOSEN this struggle