Forcing other people to live hopeless lives in pain for your own morality is evil, in my opinion.
If you are terminal, do you want all your savings to go to health care, or would you want to ensure you children or spouse get what you had saved over the years.
To me, if terminal and needing lots of healthcare, I think you are better of tossing in the towel. Trying to stick it out could put your family into poverty.
Physically assisted or otherwise is not really a factor, quadriplegics aside. Any glove wearing individual can set objects on a table and walk away.
(Also it's not exactly assisted. They set everything up for you but you're the one that pushes the button)
leakycap•1h ago
Well, non-legal suicide is a huge problem... in other words, people are making this choice whether it is legal or not, at least in some capacities.
Having a legal avenue for someone to go down might actually put them in contact with warm humans or connections that change the outcome.
But Pandora's Box is a weak-ass argument & doesn't reflect reality where legalized suicide exists and no Pandora's Box has appeared.
jawns•1h ago
Interestingly, pain is not among the top reasons.
Instead, the top reasons are around a loss of independence (having to depend on other people for care) and a loss of dignity (feeling embarrassed about having to depend on other people for care).
This IS the Pandora's Box, already opened. Our culture is hostile to people who are dependent on others for care. It leads people to worry that they will be a burden on others if they need support. It leads us to look at people with disabilities and think, "I'd rather be dead than in their position." The box has been open for decades, and a rise in acceptance of assisted suicide is just one of many related outcomes.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2265314/
leakycap•1h ago
You also define dignity as embarrassment which makes me think you don't understand the concept as it relates to the loss someone feels when facing the end of their life.
As an aside: People were terrified of gay marriage and the argument was repeatedly made that legalizing same-sex marriage was going to open a pandora's box.
At the time, I knew this was nonsense because my home state had same-sex civil unions for decades and there had been no problems except a few angry religious people (they weren't forced into gay marriages they just didn't want other people to have that option)
user_7832•59m ago
Folks who're eg depressed tend to "do less" and people in pain or with other such chronic ailments (eg ME/CFS) may have less energy to begin with to "spend".
In a survey, if the effort required to answer isn't very close to zero, you would expect to see lesser responses from such people; however they may be "typically" represented in terms of suicides.
In contrast, otherwise/formerly "healthy" people would not have this issue causing them to be underrepresented in the survey.