...does what it says on the tin. Terry Pratchett on assisted suicide : comments.
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![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
I worry that there's some unexamined ableism here; the idea that if one is dependent on someone else for one's physical needs, one's life isn't worth living seems disturbing. What would Sir Terry say to someone whose disability means they struggle to communicate? I would have liked to see some consideration of whether people could be helped more to live, rather than being helped to die.
Very definitely some ableism, I would say.
When I was 20, my then best friend (some people on your FL knew her too) told me, very kindly and seriously, that I needed to make the doctors cure my ME pronto, because I was "better off dead" than with my level of health at the time. I'm actually more ill now than I was then. I (inevitably) bottled it and repressed it at the time, and only realised a couple of years ago how hurt and betrayed I felt, and still feel from that. It's a searing memory, and a horrible wake-up call to what can result from the obsession with independence.
I'm not independent. I probably never will be. I couldn't live alone, and at the moment I need help to leave the house. This is sometimes depressing, but my life is most definitely worth living all the same. I love it passionately.
I wish more people read this blog (http://thedealwithdisability.blogspot.com/), by an awesome woman in the States, whose disabilities are a lot more serious than mine. She posts accounts of the ludicrous way people behave around her with both sarkiness and an impressive level of tolerance. I wish she posted more often! But, yes. Voices like hers aren't encountered enough.
Something else that makes me very uncomfortable with discussions of assisted suicide is that while as a society we're entertaining the ableist view of disabled (and elderly) people as a "burden" (a view which is noticeably increasing in the UK at the moment - as are violent attacks on disabled people) there's a real risk of people being put under pressure, open or subtle, to commit suicide for the good of their families and carers. I'm worried that we'd only have the illusion of consent, not the real thing. :-/
I'm really not against the idea of assisted suicide in principle, but in practise at the moment? Yeah. I'm uneasy.
(no subject)
And even, possibly, "the taxpayer". :-S
(no subject)
This woman was my mum's classmate and bridesmaid. Although she may have only been 65 when she died, I don't think she would have entertained the thought that her life wasn't worth living.
(no subject)
Also, I love your icon.
(no subject)
And yes, I love it too.
(no subject)
I guess we all hope that when our time comes, death will be quick and painless, but few people get to die like my mother's grandmother. She is reported to have said that she was very tired and needed to go to bed early, then she walked up stairs and died suddenly of a heart attack.
I admit that I can't see a way to ensure that nobody ever could possibly be influenced to commit suicide because, for example, their relatives couldn't cope any more, or even wanted to inherit their money. Neither would I trust any government forever not to try to influence people as well. The human race doesn't have to means to do anything flawlessly. Some occasional evil could not be avoided if people were allowed access to a medicalised and painless means of suicide. There are safeguards in the system in Switzerland, and they try to eliminate that possibility. They may have succeeded so far, I don't now, but over a long enough time, there are inevitably going to be people who are being influenced, but nobody manages to spot this.
IF there is ever to be assisted suicide in the UK, we have to accept that the screening system is not infallible, while insisting that it is made as good as humanly possible. If the non-zero possibility of error cannot be accepted, then this is something that will not happen in the UK. However, medical treatments, intended to do reduce suffering, can cause harm in cases where human error contributes to what goes wrong. We do not believe medical error is in any sense acceptable, but I believe that the consensus is that medicine is worth the risk.
I am aware that some people have to endure things I can't face even trying to imagine in the final stages of their diseases, and I feel strongly that this is evil as well, and that it is inhumane to force people to go on to the bitter end if they are suffering severely. I would like to reduce this, even at the expense of an irreducible level of risk of very ill people being influenced to commit suicide when, on balance, they might not have made that choice.
Personally, I would also feel less afraid if I knew that there was a painless way out if I had a disease I couldn't deal with. The disease might not get that painful or otherwise impossible to cope with, but knowing that if it did there would be a way to escape would, I think, make it more endurable. As things are, you'd need to be still physically and mentally able to organise and carry out travel to Switzerland, and rich enough to do so. People lacking those resources don't get the choice of a less painful way out.
(no subject)
Wow.
I've had people tell me that I shouldn't have children because it's "better if people like me weren't born at all", but they weren't my best friend.
(no subject)
And now I sound like a daily fail reader.