Next year's expansion of the criteria for medically assisted death will allow Canadians like Lisa Pauli, whose sole underlying condition is mental illness, the choice to die in this way.
Yeah, like I think the option should exist once you’ve passed certain qualifiers. But being mentally ill has so many consequences from capitalism. I myself struggle with metal health at times, and those times are always at their absolute worst financial problems come up. And our society is extremely difficult to get started in. Most people my age are only one paycheck away from desperation. When you’re mentally ill poverty is a symptom, you’re that much less capable of working. And society refuses to help you in the long term. You’ll always have to face your own unreliability as an existential threat, which worsens how unreliable you are.
It is morally wrong to euthanize people because capitalism has decided they have no worth, and because they can never have a life worth living without society changing. But thats almost never what people want to talk about, they want to talk about how it’s just wrong to let the unwell die. Never about how they can prevent us from becoming so unwell we cannot function.
Not at all, its just important not to lose sight of what the actual problem is here. The problem being that capitalism causes mental health problems, and makes it almost impossible to completely treat many mental health problems. We can’t concede that point, least of all now when it is a subject of national debate. People don’t want to just watch our vulnerable and impoverished choose death over continuing to suffer in ways they don’t have to. Theres a real point of radicalization here, a point where people want solutions and we can actually offer real ones to them.
People choose to commit suicide all the time for thousands of different reasons, medical assistance doesn’t enable suicide it simply makes it more humane.
I never said it did enable it, nor did I say that we shouldn’t have legal options for people who are suffering.
But again, this isn’t entirely an issue of medical ethics. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have MAID, I am saying that every single time the subject comes up we should be saying as loudly and as frequently as possible that many of these people are dying of capitalism. They are dying of wage slavery. They are killing themselves because capitalism has decided they have no worth, and they are facing homelessness starvation and spiraling health conditions as a consequence.
You’re misunderstanding me. I am not anti MAID. I’m not going to share too much personal details here but I’ve dealt with suicide many times in my adult life. I am well aware of how real the suffering of the mentally ill is. That only galvanizes my conviction that if you’re talking about this subject and you’re not pointing the finger at the Canadian government and absolutely demanding that they expand disability income, create UBI, and expand public Healthcare and ensure every Canadian citizen has access to widespread and competent mental health care - then you don’t have any actual interest in helping the mentally ill. Only in making sure that death is an option, which is kinda like ensuring veteran’s welfare after deployment by making sure they can kill themselves when society fails them. You can advocate for both. You can think that MAID should be an option and that our government has to actually make society a livable place.
Yeah, like I think the option should exist once you’ve passed certain qualifiers. But being mentally ill has so many consequences from capitalism. I myself struggle with metal health at times, and those times are always at their absolute worst financial problems come up. And our society is extremely difficult to get started in. Most people my age are only one paycheck away from desperation. When you’re mentally ill poverty is a symptom, you’re that much less capable of working. And society refuses to help you in the long term. You’ll always have to face your own unreliability as an existential threat, which worsens how unreliable you are.
It is morally wrong to euthanize people because capitalism has decided they have no worth, and because they can never have a life worth living without society changing. But thats almost never what people want to talk about, they want to talk about how it’s just wrong to let the unwell die. Never about how they can prevent us from becoming so unwell we cannot function.
Is it morally right to force them to continue living without changing the system?
We both know that the economic system won’t be changed anytime soon.
Not at all, its just important not to lose sight of what the actual problem is here. The problem being that capitalism causes mental health problems, and makes it almost impossible to completely treat many mental health problems. We can’t concede that point, least of all now when it is a subject of national debate. People don’t want to just watch our vulnerable and impoverished choose death over continuing to suffer in ways they don’t have to. Theres a real point of radicalization here, a point where people want solutions and we can actually offer real ones to them.
People choose to commit suicide all the time for thousands of different reasons, medical assistance doesn’t enable suicide it simply makes it more humane.
I never said it did enable it, nor did I say that we shouldn’t have legal options for people who are suffering.
But again, this isn’t entirely an issue of medical ethics. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have MAID, I am saying that every single time the subject comes up we should be saying as loudly and as frequently as possible that many of these people are dying of capitalism. They are dying of wage slavery. They are killing themselves because capitalism has decided they have no worth, and they are facing homelessness starvation and spiraling health conditions as a consequence.
You’re misunderstanding me. I am not anti MAID. I’m not going to share too much personal details here but I’ve dealt with suicide many times in my adult life. I am well aware of how real the suffering of the mentally ill is. That only galvanizes my conviction that if you’re talking about this subject and you’re not pointing the finger at the Canadian government and absolutely demanding that they expand disability income, create UBI, and expand public Healthcare and ensure every Canadian citizen has access to widespread and competent mental health care - then you don’t have any actual interest in helping the mentally ill. Only in making sure that death is an option, which is kinda like ensuring veteran’s welfare after deployment by making sure they can kill themselves when society fails them. You can advocate for both. You can think that MAID should be an option and that our government has to actually make society a livable place.