France’s lower house of parliament has passed a draft law that would allow adults with incurable illness to end their lives with medical help under strict conditions.
That sort of thing has always been the argument against. Doesn’t even require capitalism or corporate greed (but I repeat myself). End-of-life is the most expensive time of our existence, by an order of magnitude, regardless of how it’s paid for. And all the money spent keeping a hopeless case alive is money not spent on the living. Again, regardless of political or economic systems.
It’s very easy for a young person to say they’ll willingly let go, been there, said that. When it’s your time I’d imagine you will want to hang in there as long as possible.
I’ve cheated death at least twice, arguably thrice. I’m not talking a bad car wreck or a close call, I mean, “I will die for sure if I don’t figure a way out of this shit”. It’s amazing how hard you will fight when faced with the reaper. Kinda comforting in an odd way as well! Knowing how you’ll face the end, because you have, takes much fear out of it.
Consider the case of an elderly person faced with family watching the inheritance drain away, by the hour. Imagine the pressure they could apply. And one doesn’t even have to be thinking in those terms, not top-of-mind anyway. If you’ve ever watched someone close dying by inches, you likely thought, “Just give up, you’ve done your time and you did it well.” (I said almost exactly that to my unconscious, 87-yo mother dying of COVID. She heard, on some level, struggled to breathe a bit. Died that night.)
OTOH, I’ve said my whole life that deciding your end is the one thing we can all do, and have a right to do so.
That sort of thing has always been the argument against. Doesn’t even require capitalism or corporate greed (but I repeat myself). End-of-life is the most expensive time of our existence, by an order of magnitude, regardless of how it’s paid for. And all the money spent keeping a hopeless case alive is money not spent on the living. Again, regardless of political or economic systems.
It’s very easy for a young person to say they’ll willingly let go, been there, said that. When it’s your time I’d imagine you will want to hang in there as long as possible.
I’ve cheated death at least twice, arguably thrice. I’m not talking a bad car wreck or a close call, I mean, “I will die for sure if I don’t figure a way out of this shit”. It’s amazing how hard you will fight when faced with the reaper. Kinda comforting in an odd way as well! Knowing how you’ll face the end, because you have, takes much fear out of it.
Consider the case of an elderly person faced with family watching the inheritance drain away, by the hour. Imagine the pressure they could apply. And one doesn’t even have to be thinking in those terms, not top-of-mind anyway. If you’ve ever watched someone close dying by inches, you likely thought, “Just give up, you’ve done your time and you did it well.” (I said almost exactly that to my unconscious, 87-yo mother dying of COVID. She heard, on some level, struggled to breathe a bit. Died that night.)
OTOH, I’ve said my whole life that deciding your end is the one thing we can all do, and have a right to do so.
tl;dr: I ramble. It’s complex.