UK Lawmakers Vote in Support of Assisted Dying (cnn.com) 39
British members of parliament have voted to legalize assisted dying, approving a contentious proposal that would make the United Kingdom one of a small handful of nations to allow terminally ill people to end their lives. From a report: Lawmakers in the House of Commons voted by 330 to 275 to support the bill, after an hours-long debate in the chamber and a years-long campaign by high-profile figures that drew on emotional first-hand testimony.
Britain is now set to join a small club of nations to have legalized the process, and one of the largest by population to allow it. The bill must still clear the House of Lords and parliamentary committees, but Friday's vote marked the most important hurdle.
It allows people with a terminal condition and less than six months to live to take a substance to end their lives, as long as they are capable of making the decision themselves. Two doctors, and then a High Court judge, would need to sign off on the choice. Canada, New Zealand, Spain and most of Australia allow assisted dying in some form, as do several US states including Oregon, Washington and California.
Britain is now set to join a small club of nations to have legalized the process, and one of the largest by population to allow it. The bill must still clear the House of Lords and parliamentary committees, but Friday's vote marked the most important hurdle.
It allows people with a terminal condition and less than six months to live to take a substance to end their lives, as long as they are capable of making the decision themselves. Two doctors, and then a High Court judge, would need to sign off on the choice. Canada, New Zealand, Spain and most of Australia allow assisted dying in some form, as do several US states including Oregon, Washington and California.
the death penalty is being removed in states! (Score:2)
the death penalty is being removed in states!
Honestly if you're Canadian (Score:2)
I'm actually genuinely surprised how low the suicide rate is in America given how poorly we treat people. It's probably going to get a lot worse in the coming years given what we know about trans people and suicide rates...
Re: Honestly if you're Canadian (Score:3)
given what we know about trans people and suicide rates...
"Know" is doing a lot of work here, considering how little the scientific community has chosen to know.... https://www.nytimes.com/2024/1... [nytimes.com]
Re:That's how it starts (Score:4, Insightful)
How horrible that people should have control over their own bodies. Perhaps we should have the government dictate what we can do. That will solve the problem.
Sin (Score:2)
One of the core beliefs of our evangelicals is that God is basically an asshole drill instructor and he punishes everyone if anyone fucks up.
The other thing you need to understand is sin against God comes in gradients. Like temperature. Imagine a sin thermometer. Measuring the level of sin and if it gets too high God smites everything. That's what these people believe.
Once you understand that their insistence on contro
Re: Sin (Score:2)
The wife is a physician who occasionally works with terminal patients. She informs me that there are practitioners out there who will try to apply heroic treatments to people already near the ends of their natural lives who are suffering because
a) The patients' families demand heroic attempts at treatment
b) Dead patients skew the averages unfavorably, whether in an actual metric that matters or purely along the axis of ego.
c) Can't charge billable hours on a dead guy. A technically still alive guy though...
Re: Sin (Score:2)
I honestly can't tell if you're trolling people, have been living under a rock for the past few decades, or are just fishing for Inigo Montoya quotations.
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It allows people with a terminal condition and less than six months to live to take a substance to end their lives, as long as they are capable of making the decision themselves
That's how it starts. "Oh, we'll be so careful. We'll have all these restrictions."
And then everywhere this gets implemented, it loosens, and loosens, and loosens ...
Predictable. And predicted. And literally happens, over and over.
Where are you going with this? What in history, is over and over? I’m guessing this really isn’t of any major benefit to anyone except the one who is suffering and wanting an end to that suffering. They’re probably not going to “cheat” a single life insurance company out of their money anyway.
Only people that will lose out are those in the business of squeezing every last drop of financial blood from a dying stone who probably feel they are being “robbed” somehow
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What a load of dribbling idiocy. I watched both my parents die slow horrible painful deaths from dementia in their mid 90’s. Exactly what they both feared for years, and didnt want to happen, they both had DNRs but there was nothing further I could do. We treat dogs better. There is no slippery slope, no loosening at all, its just an excuse made by mainly religious people who want to control others choices, regardless of how torturous their deaths are.
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False. We will allow the person to decide if enough is enough. Not the government, which is what you want, the power of big government to decide how we live and die.
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False. We will allow the person to decide if enough is enough. Not the government, which is what you want, the power of big government to decide how we live and die.
You must be talking about a completely different country? This story is about the UK, the most busybody government-knows-best nannystate that exists in the developed world.
Let's review the recent case of Sudiksha Thirumalesh [wikipedia.org]
- past the age of majority (19 years old)
- wanted to go to Canada for experimental treatment
- parents also wanted that
- judge rules she cannot go, is not competent to make medical decisions (not because of any mental deficiency), and must die in palliative care instead (which she does)
-
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In Canada patients are being recommended assisted suicide as an alternative when they are disabled, stuck on patient waiting lists, or too poor to receive treatment.
Bullshit. Especially the last; given that medical care in Canada is free, nobody is "too poor" to receive treatment.
Free Medical Care in Canada (Score:2)
MAID in Canada now accounts for 1% of all deaths (Score:1)
MAID in Canada now accounts for 4.1% of all deaths (Score:2)
How is it a slippery slope? I think it's much better to have MAID in Canada account for 4.1% (your stat is wrong) of all deaths if that's what people choose instead of a painful and drawn-out death when death is inevitable.
The fact that MAID accounts for 4.1% of deaths means probably cancer and other terminal illness deaths are down by the same amount.
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The latest report I could find from Canada was from 2022 [canada.ca].
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How is it a slippery slope? I think it's much better to have MAID in Canada account for 4.1% (your stat is wrong) of all deaths if that's what people choose instead of a painful and drawn-out death when death is inevitable.
Death is always inevitable for everybody.
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Yes, death is inevitable, but people should have the right to choose a dignified peaceful death over a drawn-out painful one, if death is imminent anyway.
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In any system, you'll be able to find bad examples if you dig enough. I know someone who has a pretty serious disease that has periodic flare-ups, and during one of these, she asked about MAID. The doctor said she was not eligible because her disease can be controlled. This is a far more common response than the couple of examples you posted, but it doesn't make the news or engender outrage.
I also know someone who had bone cancer that had metastasized and was going to kill her within months. She opted
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I live in Canada and have had experience with the MAID system with close friends and family.
"Slippery slope" is a common argument when nobody wants any changes whatsoever.
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I only wasted enough time to read two of those links before I realized you were just absolutely full of shit with the rest of your post.
Those articles are families complaining that they disagreed with the deceased's decision to end their life. Its none of their fucking business. No one was forced to die. No one died against their will. They only died when they decided they wanted to die. Thats it.
It doesn't matter if you disagree with their reasoning, you do not get a say in their decision. Neither does the
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How is it a slippery slope? I think it's much better to have MAID in Canada account for 4.1% (your stat is wrong) of all deaths if that's what people choose instead of a painful and drawn-out death when death is inevitable.
The fact that MAID accounts for 4.1% of deaths means probably cancer and other terminal illness deaths are down by the same amount.
Having recently watch my mother pass away - very slowly - from Alzheimer's, I very much hope I can one day soon do an advance directive to avoid that fate myself. While they debate whether the law should be amended to allow MAID for mental illness, which I can completely understand is contentious, I wait for the law to allow me to make my wishes known ahead of time.
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Yes. I watched my grandmother die from Alzheimers. It's a terrible disease.
My mother, thankfully, kept her mental faculties right up until the end, and she did not have a long, drawn-out terminal disease when the end finally came.
Right now, I cannot think of any circumstances that would make me want MAID. But I sure as hell want the option just in case.
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Nobody's pressuring patients in Canada as a cost-cutting measure. That's bullshit.
Re: MAID in Canada now accounts for 1% of all deat (Score:2)
You know, people kill themselves with booze. People kill themselves with hard drugs. People kill themselves by eating their guns, not wearing their seat belts at the drag race, declining medical treatments.
What Ever.
That's between them and whatever God they believe in. If the modern-day Quakers weren't a magnet for Marxists, treehuggers, and other crazies, their philosophy of no intermediaries between Man and God might have had more penetration into the zeitgeist than it has.
Hegh'bat! Qapla'! (Score:3)