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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   23718 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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Popping the filter bubble and the sanctity of life.

This Tuesday I was presented with a piece of Trivia that brought me up short.

More people are killed each year by doctors in Canada than are killed by gun violence in the US.

My initial reaction was to quite literally exclaim "bullshit!" but having looked into it, there does appear to be a case. According to the Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada (which is currently the most recent report available) Canadian doctors euthanized 16,499 individuals in 2024, an increase of 7.5% over the 15,343 euthanized in 2023. Meanwhile The Trace a website maintained by the Gun Control advocacy organization Everytown USA maintains that there were 14,651 instances of Homicide by Gunshot in 2025. While this number does not include self-inflicted gunshots (IE Suicides) it does include an estimated 1,200 cases where the shooting was likely justified (IE suspects being shot by police or by would-be victims) and at least 2 instances of execution by firing squad.

Upon review of those numbers and their associated trend-lines where instances of euthanasia in Canada have increased with each consecutive year since it was legalized, while homicide in the US has been trending downward for the last 5 years from it's Pandemic-era peak it actually seems likely to me that more people are killed by doctors in Canada than are killed by guns in the US. Not "per capita" but by raw quantity (16 thousand people and change versus 14 thousand and change).

Considering the above in the context of another story that came across my feed a couple weeks ago. A Ghoulish Proposal Gets a Prestige Endorsement, it seems to me that there is a concerted effort on the part of certain factions to commodify and devalue Human life. See this story from the New York Times last year Organ Donors are too Rare we Need a New Definition of Death. I expect the media to assure me that that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy announcing that the Network for Hope (an organ procurement non-profit serving Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio) having had their certification revoked on the basis of credible claims that many donors were not legally dead at the time their organs were harvested is completely unrelated.

On a slightly different track, back when Harris was running for president there was this "ridiculous claim" that the Left wanted to legalize Abortion up to the moment of crowning, but just this Monday, Massachusetts became the 10th state in the union to do just that.

As in my prior "Popping filter bubbles" posts I don't feel like any of these things really warrant a post on their own, but when taken together they illustrate a trend, and I find myself lacking the vocabulary to describe my growing sense of unease with where this one seems to be going.

I am not scared of being dead.

One is here, then one is gone, or maybe somewhere else. Either way, if someone told me that I would die at some point in the next seventy years, painlessly, healthy and happy one moment and deceased the next, I would be relieved rather than anxious.

But I am terrified of a painful death and especially of dying slowly and painfully. That is what haunts me. The statistics on euthanasia are clear; for every autistic 25 year old attention seeking woman who has talked herself into depression (and who might well kill herself anyway eventually) there are fifty people who are very sick and in pain from severe and often terminal illness, every breath a torture, pumped full of medication, aching, kept alive by drugs and machines, living to suffer.

In a fair world, their suffering should take priority over some moron who hates their life, sorry.

One is here, then one is gone

Epicurus said something like this in his letter to Menoeceus: "Where I am, death is not; where death is, I am not."

for every autistic 25 year old attention seeking woman who has talked herself into depression

Why are we even supposed to care about them anyway? If they are so hell bent on removing themselves from the gene pool, good riddance.

While this number does not include self-inflicted gunshots (IE Suicides)

Disingenuous argument. So you are concerned about people killing themselves but only if they do it using a doctor?

It's not an argument it was a question at my local haunt's trivia night. What kills more people per year?

A) Gun violence in the US.
B) Doctors in Canada.
C) Traffic accidents in Germany.

And as i said, my initial reaction was to quite literally exclaim "bullshit!" when the presenter told us the answer was 'B'.

And the numbers on the card are all dubious.

A) Does "gun violence" count suicides or not? Gun suicides are the majority of fatal shootings in America. If suicides count as violent, the number on the card is about a factor of 3 too low.
B) Doctors in Canada (and everyone else) kill far more people through medical errors than they do through MAID, it is just that we don't have a reliable count. So the number on the card is an order of magnitude too low.
C) Most car crashes are not accidents, but result from someone making a deliberate decision to violate a traffic law, or at least culpable negligence. Assuming they used the headline number for fatal car crashes, the number on the card is an order of magnitude too high.

The number for "gun violence" does not include self inflicted shootings as i already explained in the OP. Additionally you do understand that Canadian doctors killing an unknown number of people by accident in addition to the number they kill on purpose would increase rather than decrease the total number of people killed don't you?

Point being that when i say i was surprised to find out that the number for 'B' was larger than the number for 'A', saying the number for 'B' might be even larger than reported is not a rebuttal.

I'm not challenging the claim that doctors kill more people than guns - I'm challenging whether this made sense as a trivia question.

It's fantastic, isn't it? Medicine and car safety getting so far. I don't think I would have guessed correctly the order of magnitude of people who die in car accidents in germany.

So you're saying doctors don't kill people, people kill people (themselves)?

Correct. We should get rid of people.

Noted.

I have a creeping fear of euthanasia becoming a popular fervor of the sort we've seen examples of of late, where affirmation is the only legitimate response and all skepticism is hate speech that must be suppressed, right around the time that automation of the economy leaves the bulk of humanity economically obsolete. Will not the new rulers find that it would be much cheaper than eternal welfare, and much cleaner than massacres, if much of the population can be guided into walking into their own deaths just due to subtle guiding of the popular understanding of what it means to be a Good Person?

I recall reading some short story either by Scott Alexander or linked from his site that had this sort of thing as a premise, except it was present/near-future with anthropogenic global warming as the rationale; in order to reduce carbon emissions, people were being sent the message from pop culture and educators and mainstream media of how responsible and cool it was to go into suicide booths, which exist all over the place, at least in the city in which the protagonist resided. IIRC, it ended, 1984-style, with the protagonist deciding that walking into one of those suicide booths was the really cool thing to do and doing so.

Will not the new rulers find that it would be much cheaper than eternal welfare, and much cleaner than massacres, if much of the population can be guided into walking into their own deaths just due to subtle guiding of the popular understanding of what it means to be a Good Person?

Given how wildly successful over-replacement-level immigration has been I think you already know the answer to this.

Will not the new rulers find that it would be much cheaper than eternal welfare, and much cleaner than massacres

It's a "fun" rabbit hole to get into. Though your "cheaper than welfare theory" suffers a bit if you look into who euthanasia is targeted at in marketing materials.

Though your "cheaper than welfare theory" suffers a bit

Not if we believe some of the claims around MAID; "sorry, we can't get you a wheelchair, but here's a pamphlet on assisted dying!"

I think the concerns are that there are two tracks:

person whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable (Track 1)
a person whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable taking into account all of their medical circumstances (Track 2)

The fears are around Track 2 and that this is getting expanded/misused. Even the "it's all disinformation, here are the facts" website can only say "nah, you can't get MAID for mental problems right now, you have to wait till next March till that's legal!"

Is MAiD available for mental health disorders right now? No. Health Canada's most recent annual report confirms that MAiD for mental disorders remains excluded until at least March 2027.

That's not a solid "this will never happen" guarantee there. "You have to be over 18"? There's a push for mature minors to be able to avail of MAID. And what exactly is a "mature minor"? Well that depends on content and context, you see:

The term mature minor is a legal construct referring to persons under the age of 18 who are sufficiently mature to “understand information relevant to a treatment decision and to appreciate the reasonably foreseeable consequences of a decision or lack of decision.” The mature minor status can either be formally conferred through a legal process or can be informally granted by a healthcare practitioner, and the specific process and definitions depend on the provincial/territorial statute. For instance, in Ontario, essentially no consideration is given to age, with the ability to consent to medical treatment based entirely on capacity and competence. In Quebec, on the other hand, minors may generally consent to medical treatment at the age of 14, though exceptions will be made depending on the risk associated with care or the length of a hospital stay. Practically speaking, this means that minors under 14 cannot provide their own consent in Quebec. Moreover, the designation of “mature minor” can vary from one time point to another and from one decision to another—meaning it is context and content dependent.

"Vulnerable populations are protected by stringent safeguards"? How stringent, and how long will they continue to be safeguards, given the "well not yet just wait another year" that we see with the mental disorders requirement?

Let me try to think through this while I write this comment.

The issue at hand is Medical assistance in dying (MAID). Which is not just in Canada but in other countries too. Supporters of this would argue for the freedom of individuals to make their own choice. Opponents of this would argue on the sanctity of life (usually in a religious sense), of how the death would affect others, of never giving up. There might be a narrow group of opponents that doesn't want goverment mandate, fearing overreach or callous decision making.

  1. My immediate stance is to support MAID. I think suicide is stupid, but in the end it's an individual choice that affects the to-be-dead the most.
  2. I am not religious so I don't have the same axiom to make life holy, even if I think life is very important and is the foundation for even experiencing.
  3. I am not convinced of the argument of how suicide would affect others. We allow people to do all kinds of "stupid" things that affect others. People can be stupid drunk or stupid smoker, and now in certain localities even be stupid stoners. People can be stupid gambler. People can sign up for the military (though I am more inclined to say there is a base level of honor and public good and others for joining the military, yet I do think some would consider joining the military, any military, is stupid). People can be a stupid debtor with bills up to the eyeball. And so on. We certainly do our best to limit people's ability to do that but we don't stop people from making their own decisions.
  4. I am not convinced of never giving up. This just reminds me of the digging for diamond meme. Honestly sometimes it just feels like chance whether not giving up will or not lead to a "better" life. What's the difference to the Jews when they killed themselves on the trains vs at the gas chambers. And if nothing in the world is for free, what has to be traded for instead?
  5. I am a little unclear of any particular argument against the fear of government mandate. I suppose being forced to die against your will is different from asking to die and it's just a different situation altogether. I do think slippery slope is a thing, but I also believe in the slippery slope fallacy.
  6. Honestly I was ok with just the argument of individuals should be able to make their own choice (with the usual caveat of not "harming" other individuals, see 3) so I didn't really think too hard about any other arguments in support of MAID.

There's a repeating discourse cycle where first a conservative sounds the alarm with raw MAID numbers, and then someone else comes in and provides a more detailed breakdown showing it's overwhelmingly old people near death who use MAID (as aqouta does below). I'm not a big fan of the state killing young healthy people with depression (even at their own request) but I've seen this cycle so many times that I basically tune out any anti-MAID people who just post raw numbers.

If you're conservative and you want to persuade people who don't share your worldview but think there's some potential for state overreach or bad norms, it's counterproductive to sound the alarm with these high headline numbers when many people are okay with use case that makes up the vast majority. Tell me if there is large percentage growth in specifically young healthy people with mental illness. Tell me if MAID is increasing total completed voluntary deaths among physically healthy people rather than displacing suicides. But if you just post "the total number of MAID uses is going up" and then someone else says "that's 95% old people or people near death" you haven't popped my filter bubble, you've reinforced it.

95% oldies today. What about tomorrow?

How many users of artificial contraception today are married couples with a kid or two just using it to space out their family so they will end up with three, four, or five children over a sensible period? But that's how it started, and that was the exact same argument: oh don't try and scare me, the numbers don't bear it out.

I've had an interest in tracking this particular issue through the Anglican Communion and I think it's instructive as to how acceptance changes social attitudes, then social attitudes further soften on acceptance, in a circle. "The Lambeth Conference is a decennial international gathering of bishops from the Anglican Communion, convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury"; basically it's where they gather to thrash out pastoral questions and applications of theology to the practice of the churches.

1920 Lambeth Conference: no-no to contraception, it is wrong and sinful

Resolution 70
Problems of Marriage and Sexual Morality
The Conference urges the importance of enlisting the help of all high-principled men and women, whatever be their religious beliefs, in co-operation with or, if necessary, in bringing pressure to bear upon, authorities both national and local, for removing such incentives to vice as indecent literature, suggestive plays and films, the open or secret sale of contraceptives, and the continued existence of brothels.

1930 Lambeth Conference: well okay but only for married couples in cases of necessity

Resolution 15
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex
Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.

Resolution 17
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex
While the Conference admits that economic conditions are a serious factor in the situation, it condemns the propaganda which treats conception control as a way of meeting those unsatisfactory social and economic conditions which ought to be changed by the influence of Christian public opinion.

Resolution 18
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex
Sexual intercourse between persons who are not legally married is a grievous sin. The use of contraceptives does not remove the sin. In view of the widespread and increasing use of contraceptives among the unmarried and the extention of irregular unions owing to the diminution of any fear of consequences, the Conference presses for legislation forbidding the exposure for sale and the unrestricted advertisement of contraceptives, and placing definite restrictions upon their purchase.

1948 Lambeth Conference - nothing about contraception, they were much more worried about divorce becoming widespread and easily available, and divorced people wanting to remarry in the Church. And warning against marrying Roman Catholics.

1958 Lambeth Conference - God wants you to use contraception! (but only if you're married):

Resolution 115 The Family in Contemporary Society - Marriage
The Conference believes that the responsibility for deciding upon the number and frequency of children has been laid by God upon the consciences of parents everywhere; that this planning, in such ways as are mutually acceptable to husband and wife in Christian conscience, is a right and important factor in Christian family life and should be the result of positive choice before God. Such responsible parenthood, built on obedience to all the duties of marriage, requires a wise stewardship of the resources and abilities of the family as well as a thoughtful consideration of the varying population needs and problems of society and the claims of future generations.

1968 Lambeth Conference - the Catholics are wrong in "Humanae Vitae", technically you should only be contracepting if you're married and planning to have kids eventually but eh, we all know how society is going:

Resolution 22 Responsible Parenthood
This Conference has taken note of the papal encyclical letter "Humanae vitae" recently issued by His Holiness Pope Paul VI. The Conference records its appreciation of the Pope's deep concern for the institution of marriage and the integrity of married life.

Nevertheless, the Conference finds itself unable to agree with the Pope's conclusion that all methods of conception control other than abstinence from sexual intercourse or its confinement to periods of infecundity are contrary to the "order established by God." It reaffirms the findings of the Lambeth Conference of 1958 contained in Resolutions 112, 113, and 115 which are as follows:

  1. The Conference records its profound conviction that the idea of the human family is rooted in the Godhead and that consequently all problems of sex relations, the procreation of children, and the organisation of family life must be related, consciously and directly, to the creative, redemptive, and sanctifying power of God.

  2. The Conference affirms that marriage is a vocation to holiness, through which men and women may share in the love and creative purpose of God. The sins of self-indulgence and sensuality, born of selfishness and a refusal to accept marriage as a divine vocation, destroy its true nature and depth, and the right fullness and balance of the relationship between men and women. Christians need always to remember that sexual love is not an end in itself nor a means to self-gratification, and that self-discipline and restraint are essential conditions of the responsible freedom of marriage and family planning.

  3. The Conference believes that the responsibility for deciding upon the number and frequency of children has been laid by God upon the consciences of parents everywhere; that this planning, in such ways as are mutually acceptable to husband and wife in Christian conscience, is a right and important factor in Christian family life and should be the result of positive choice before God. Such responsible parenthood, built on obedience to all the duties of marriage, requires a wise stewardship of the resources and abilities of the family as well as a thoughtful consideration of the varying population needs and problems of society and the claims of future generations.

The Conference commends the Report of Committee 5 of the Lambeth Conference 1958, together with the study entitled "The Family in Contemporary Society" which formed the basis of the work of that Committee, to the attention of all men of good will for further study in the light of the continuing sociological and scientific developments of the past decades.

1978 Lambeth Conference - contraception? birth control? Nah, we've moved on to the gays now.

So it took just 48 years to move from "the only permissible form of birth control is abstinence" to "that's wrong, dumb Romans! (let's not mention that used to be our position too)" and then another 10 years to capitulate on social acceptance and increasingly widespread sex outside of marriage and use of contraception.

60 years from "this is wrong and sinful" to "this is your duty, God says".

Things move a lot faster today. Don't presume that "95% oldies" now is going to remain "95% oldies" in future.

OP posted as an attempt to "pop filter bubbles" and I just want to say that for people outside the conservative filter bubble the argumentative form of proposing a slippery slope and then assuming we'll inevitably slide down it to the bottom is not highly persuasive. The pro-life movement (which has had a strong of recent successes in the U.S.) doesn't say "we demand a return to the 1920s status quo on contraception because anything else is an inevitable slippery slope to infanticide" because they know that isn't actually persuasive to the public.

I'm not going to spend my time trying to disabuse religious conservatives of their belief that society slides down every slippery slope they can imagine. I do hope I can get you all to understand it's an eccentric aspect of your worldview and you're not popping filter bubbles by telling everyone else that you can imagine slippery slopes without providing evidence we're actually sliding down them.

What's wrong with slippery slope arguments? Would you also dismiss concerns of global warming ("climate change") as a slippery slope argument? Or the Nazi bar argument? It's just arguing from basic causality. It shouldn't be taken less seriously to argue that if X happens, then Y, and then if Y, then Z. Especially when there doesn't seem to be a consistent limiting principle that would stop the chain of causality from continuing to Z. You are free to disagree on the specifics on X, Y and Z, but just dismissing arguments of this form out of hand doesn't seem conducive to discussion.

Proposing a plausible sounding chain of causation is cheap and easy and only persuasive to people who already share your beliefs about how complex social dynamics will inevitably play out. I will note that when the climate people propose "more CO2 -> higher average global temperature -> economic/environmental/humanitarian catastrophe" they then go on to spend tremendous resources measuring the global average temperature and developing cyclical climate models and attempt to show that the increased number of extreme weather events is related to the rising average global temperature.

In this thread anti-MAID people are proposing "terminal cancer patients and people with degenerative neurological conditions using MAID -> healthy old people using MAID because of new social norms about not being a burden -> depressed 25 year olds killing themselves" (x->y->z). I think that's a plausible chain of events, but I don't think it's the only possible way for a complex social change to play out, so I am asking for evidence that y and z are happening at increased rates relative to the past. No one in this thread has bothered to answer me with numbers. I've gotten "x->y->z is plausible because a->b->c in the past" or "isn't the general form x->y->z valid" or "x is increasing" but no one is digging into the stats to tell me what's going on with y and z.

Sure looks like a slope. Sure looks like it's trending downhill. Sure looks like heading downhill is accelerating.

But no, don't believe your lying eyes, that's not slippery and it's not a slope!

I'm not even disagreeing with you all that this is a potentially slippery slope I'm just asking for any sort of numerical evidence that we're sliding (young people or healthy old people are using MAID more) and no one has bothered to provide it. I'm just supposed to "believe my eyes" about statistical trends in the Canadian medical system, what?

There are countries where assisted suicide has been legal for decades.

"that's 95% old people or people near death" you haven't popped my filter bubble, you've reinforced it.

So what about that 5%?

5% of 16,000 is a lot more than 5% of 100.

I'm not Canadian so I don't know what Track 2 means and who uses it. I askee Chat GPT and it tells me it's for people who aren't dying but have serious decline in their ability to function and that ~50% are people with degenerative neurological conditions, and that the median age in 2024 was 75. I had a close friend and roommate whose dad died slowly of Alzheimer's, it was awful. I don't think people with degenerative neurological disease ending their lives on their own terms is a problem.

Now okay so there's still a pretty big other category that seems to be a bunch of musculoskeletal issues, chronic pain, etc. Maybe there's a bunch of young healthy people in that bundle and I would find it if I dug through it but I'm not Canadian and I don't have that much time on my hands.

But we've done a second round of you telling me "a large number of people are using MAID, this is concerning" and then I get one piece of additional contextual information and it turns out I'm actually completely fine with the relevant use case. I think I'm now more likely to ignore anti-MAID people in the future because while you may raise issues about the possibility of bad social norms pushing relatively functional elderly folks to suicide (which seems a plausible concern to me) you keep scaremongering using numbers that include cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients ending their lives on their own terms. So I don't think you are actually responding to the first signs of a bad equilibrium taking shape. I think you probably have an eccentric moral framework where people with terminal cancer dying on their own terms is bad and you're using our shared concerns about the long term formation of bad social norms to try to get me to oppose what I think are perfectly reasonable MAID cases.

But that is the exact problem: the Track 1 cases are being used as the stalking horse for Track 2. While Track 2 might be confined for now to Alzheimer's etc. there's nothing saying it will remain confined to such cases. March 2027 is the first permissible time to start trying to expand Track 2 to mental health disorders.

And while it's only 4.4% now, what will it be in future? Will it creep up as it becomes more acceptable and more available and people become more aware they can avail of it? Will mental health disorders like chronic depression be included in the name of compassion?

If MAID was only "people terminally ill who are going to die soon and painfully", there would be less concern. But it's not, and has not been from the start, and once the camel gets its nose into the tent, at what point do you tell the camel to stop moving it? It's only the head now. It's only the neck now.

And while it's only 4.4% now, what will it be in future? Will it creep up as it becomes more acceptable and more available and people become more aware they can avail of it? Will mental health disorders like chronic depression be included in the name of compassion?

Yes, I agree that could happen (but it also could not). What I am asking is that anti-MAID people present statistical evidence that this is beginning to happen, not just point out that we could in theory slide down a slippery slope, and then state that the total number of MAID cases is increasing without making any attempt to separate out "terminal cancer patient dies painlessly" from "healthy 25 year old with depression".

Moreover, it seems to me that the more normal and routine it is for people who are old or near death, the more careless and sloppy the institutions get, and the more iffy cases you get proportionally. If Canada keeps running their MAID program indefinitely, I'd expect to see feature creep get worse and worse.

While those numbers are high it should be noted like only 4.4% of those MAID deaths are "track 2" which is to say didn't qualify as having a natural death "reasonably foreseeable". The median age of "Track 1"(death reasonably foreseeable) was 78, 64% percent of which had cancer and 76% of which were receiving palliative care. This is like how gun homocide numbers are propped up by suicide by gun counting and confusing people's intuitions. The vast majority of MAID deaths have more in common with when my grandfather hit the morphine hard in hospice than someone choosing death of a long life.

On a slightly different track, back when Harris was running for president there was this "ridiculous claim" that the Left wanted to legalize Abortion up to the moment of crowning, but just this Monday, Massachusetts became the 10th state in the union to do just that.

Um. Is this an exaggeration? How is that even possible? How do you get a doctor to kill a baby that's days from coming out and is clearly already a human? I don't see how this is possible without the mother and the doctor both being sociopaths.

How do you get a doctor to kill a baby that's days from coming out and is clearly already a human?

Ignore the traditionalists and their desire to make sex have consequences because their religion says it's evil.
That is a distraction and irrelevant, as all cassus belli are.

If you accuse these people of sociopathy, then do the power calculus as any sociopath would. [Note that you're going to have to put aside the assumption that sociopathy has a negative social valence for this to make any sense; this is raw human interest and will to power, nothing more.]

First, let's assume that female privilege is axiomatically good.

Next, assume that banning baby killing in any way threatens female privilege (progressives are trivially correct about this).

Therefore, ensuring women may kill their babies at will is a legitimate objective. As such, those babies are a legitimate military target- an enemy to be destroyed. Soldiers are not committing murder when they engage the enemy, which is how abortion is categorically not murder (some militaries may impose rules of engagement and charge soldiers for killing that does not accomplish military objectives, like "you can only shoot if they're under 20 weeks old or are about to kill one of your soldiers").

At the limit, it's just that simple. (It's more complicated for whom the question of female privilege does not dominate, but as the operations become more extreme the network of complications ultimately converges on this. Every asterisk or added rule of engagement weakens that goal[1].)

Or, to rephrase. Does abortion qualify as a just [civil] war? Well, let's check. To qualify:

  • The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain

The damage here is highly symbolic, but smashing the patriarchy remains the goal here, and given how bitterly the outgroup complains about it this seems to be satisfied.

  • All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

Self-demonstrating: "10 year old rape victim forced to carry to term". Apparently "teach men not to rape" is not working.

  • There must be serious prospects of success;

Babies are completely defenseless, and the soldiers are willing to do what is necessary.

  • The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. the power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

Collateral damage is limited solely to the target and random baby murder by outside parties has not increased. We are told the baby feels no pain.

I will also point out that the more traditional forms of self-defense also qualifies as a just [civil] war under these conditions (the criminal dies, the existence of police and the memetic threat of armed citizens didn't stop them from doing the crime, only carry if you can shoot straight, only shoot if you won't hit the bystander behind him).

[1] This is assuming immediacy only and disregards any long-term damage. Yes, this goal may become repugnant or the focus on it eventually deemed excessive, but one woman's time preference is another's practice of making hay while the sun shines. The point of having power is to get to do things like this.

In practice those kinds of super-late term abortions are... not very common. But it is literally not an exaggeration of what the law says; some states have even enshrined a right to abortion immediately after birth. I suspect these laws were written by radical activists and that lawmakers enacting them do not actually read them, but as the law goes it is legal for doctors to kill very young babies in a few states.

some states have even enshrined a right to abortion immediately after birth.

I havent seen that, before, im curious, where? I know there were cases in virginia where people were getting away with infanticide in the late 2000s.

I don't see how this is possible without the mother and the doctor both being sociopaths.

Oh, honey. This is going back years and years, and of course I don't have the link, but in one of those media pieces about the Brave and Stunning Abortion Providers, there was an article by an ob/gyn doing her abortion rounds while 16 weeks pregnant, feeling her baby kicking, performing abortions on women at that same stage of pregnancy, and because of course her brain was awash in pregnancy hormones she started crying.

But that was only an emotional, hormonal reaction and she soon reasoned herself back into "abortion is good and necessary and it's not a baby yet" etc. etc. etc.

How do you get a doctor to kill a baby that's days from coming out and is clearly already a human?

That's easy. It's only a baby if the mother wants it and is not medically terminologically classified as a "baby" rather than a "foetus" until after live birth and total separation from the mother. Pre-delivery foetus has no standing of legal personhood. That includes up to moving into the vaginal tract for delivery:

A fetus is not a legal person and only gains legal personhood at birth, when it is alive and has been delivered completely separated from the pregnant person’s body. A fetus, thus, cannot have a legal parent as it is not a legally recognised entity capable of being the subject of ‘parenthood’. By virtue of not being a legal person, a fetus neither has legal rights nor legal standing. No legal claims can be made by others on its behalf; for example, to protect its welfare. Legal parenthood cannot apply to it; no one can be its parent. However, significantly, the mater est principle as codified in the statute regulating ART specifies that a woman who ‘is carrying or has carried a child… is to be treated as the mother’.

Or after a failed abortion.

Several clinical studies have examined the medical circumstances under which live births can occur following attempted abortion, particularly in the second and third trimesters when the fetus has approached or is approaching viability (typically around 20 to 24 weeks of gestation). Additionally, though extremely rare, a few first trimester failed abortion attempts have resulted in live births later on in pregnancy. Live birth outcomes are most likely to occur with the labor induction abortion method and when feticidal measures, such as intracardiac injection to stop the fetal heartbeat, are unsuccessful or omitted. In the context of abortion, feticide refers to the intentional killing of an embryo or fetus prior to expulsion from the uterus.

One of the most comprehensive studies on this phenomenon is a 2024 retrospective cohort study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Reviewing over 13,000 second-trimester abortions (15–29 weeks gestation) in a cohort indicated for fetal anomaly, maternal emergency, or other causes performed in Quebec, Canada, the study found that 11.2% of these procedures resulted in live births. This risk was especially pronounced at 20–24 weeks, where the likelihood of live birth was nearly five times higher compared to abortions performed at 15–19 weeks. Significantly, the use of feticidal injections, specifically intracardiac or intrathoracic administration, reduced this relative likelihood by 57%.

But don't worry! The unwanted products of conception will usually die on their own if there is no medical intervention, unless those spoilsport pro-lifers managed to get laws passed about not just putting the thing on a shelf and leaving it to die. That was an entire controversy back in 2002.

These findings are supported by other clinical studies and observations as well. A 2018 study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology, which focused specifically on second-trimester abortions performed without feticide for fetal anomalies or genetic abnormalities between 20 and 24 weeks gestation, found that 50.6% of fetuses were born alive. The median survival time in these cases was 32 minutes. Live birth following the attempted abortions was more likely in cases involving higher gestational age and the absence of severe anomalies. A smaller study, published in 2016 via The Journal of Reproductive Medicine, found that 15% of labor induction abortions performed between 16 and 22 weeks gestation resulted in unintended live births. Most of these infants exhibited cardiac activity for less than two hours. Consistent with most other research, the probability of live birth increased with gestational age. The study also found that attempted terminations due to prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome (trisomy 21) were associated with a higher likelihood of live birth.

There is no obvious line. Getting squeezed through a vagina is a pretty absurd standard for the beginning of personhood. I doubt they'll stop at pre-birth either; Singer and his cohorts argue that it should be fine to 'abort' one-year olds.

And why not? This sort of behavior has been pretty normal throughout human history. As usual, post-Christian fish have no clue about the water they've been swimming in.

Charitably, it's designed as a legal threshold, not a medical recommendation.

If you can't find a doctor to kill the baby one day before birth, then it shouldn't happen and it didn't. If you can find a doctor to kill the baby one day before birth then there must have been a good reason, therefore it should happen and it did.

This is the legislature 100% punting the question of abortion to doctors.

I wish I was exaggerating. What I find disturbing is that, as I was telling another user down thread, we seem to have gone from "don't be ridiculous, nobody is seriously suggesting we legalize infanticide" to "Massachusetts just effectively legalized infanticide and here's why that's a good thing" in the space of an election cycle.

I don't see how this is possible without the mother and the doctor both being sociopaths.

There are indeed, sociopaths in the world, such as this women, and this "doctor"

On a slightly different track, back when Harris was running for president there was this "ridiculous claim" that the Left wanted to legalize Abortion up to the moment of crowning, but just this Monday, Massachusetts became the 10th state in the union to do just that.

Its also worth pointing out here that the US is especially bizarre for this, since pretty much all of europe and most of the world minus China & Israel sort of, have gestational limits on the practice. So pretty much everyone, minus american progressives, think its an evil that deserves to be regulated.

pretty much all of [E]urope and most of the world minus China & Israel sort of, have gestational limits on the practice

But they have a lot fewer people using such limits as a camel's nose for banning abortions at ten weeks.

There's plenty of European countries with very early bans, and which have a combination of waiting periods, broad conscience protections for doctors, etc that make abortion very difficult to get for ordinary people.

There's plenty of European countries with very early bans

[Citation needed]

There's Poland and then a handful of microstates. Elsewhere it is legal (in most countries) or de facto legal if the woman has enough sense to play up the distress and social consequences of unwanted pregnancy.

Two weeks makes such a big difference to you, that if you don't get it, you will demand abortion until the moment of birth?

I'm not sure what the 'two weeks' refers to. What I suspect the Blue Tribe's reasoning to be, is that they believe that the Red Tribe seeks to prohibit all abortions from conception, nation-wide, possibly then proceeding to target pre-coital birth control, and any 'compromise' offered is of the 'give us some of what we want now, and we'll come back for the rest later' variety; thus, the only possible outcomes are 'abortion always legal' and abortion never legal, and the former is less bad than the latter.

The Blue Tribe's rejection of 'common-sense limits on abortion' comes from the same place as the Red Tribe's opposition to 'common-sense limits on guns'.

I'm not sure what the 'two weeks' refers to.

Germany setting it's limit to 12 weeks. My point is that No matter the way you look at it, the US is the weird one because of the people who are permissive on abortion, not because of the people who are restrictive on it.

Why stop there? More Canadians are killed by cancer, heart disease, COVID, and accidents than doctors. More Americans are killed by themselves than by other people with guns. Reasoning with raw quantities is more likely to get assisted suicide expanded rather than abolished. You won’t dismantle the master’s house with his tools.

a concerted effort on the part of certain factions

Who, exactly, do you have in mind? Doctors? Liberals?

ridiculous claim

It is a little ridiculous. Most states still have restrictions after 5 to 6 months, including California, Virginia and New York. Most states will also allow extremely late abortions…if only to save the mother’s life. Some, like Texas, have been intentionally vague about what they would and wouldn’t tolerate. Massachusetts claims that it’s rescinding its second-trimester exception specifically to help mothers in that situation. There is no insinuation that anyone involved would be happy about a D&E.

In conclusion, I think you’re overfitting the trend. Abortion laws are relatively stable now that the post-Dobbs reactions have smoothed out. They also don’t really connect to suicide or organ donor laws on the left. For the religious right, they’re all spiritual concerns, but the material facts don’t line up.

Most states will also allow extremely late abortions…if only to save the mother’s life.

Vermont, Colorado, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington DC, & New Mexico will let you abort any time you want. & infact, there are clinics around the US that will let you do so, such as the DuPont Clinic.

You missed Alaska, Michigan, Minnesota, and Maryland.

But every state has an exception to save the mother’s life. Even some of the most conservative, like Alabama, allow aborting nonviable pregnancies.

Sure, but the problem im pointing out here is that those abortions in several states are allowed no matter what! The moms life doesnt need to be in danger, she can do it for any reason at all.

Right.

All states “legalize abortion up to the moment of crowning” under some conditions. 10 states, most of them left-leaning, stripped the conditions. On the other hand, states like CA and NY, which are usually furthest left, didn’t feel the need.

This suggests that “legalize abortion up to the moment of crowning” was not really what “the Left wanted.” It’s more like a side effect of 1) avoiding Texas-style ambiguity and 2) countersignaling that they aren’t like those icky red states.

If one believes that unnecessary abortions are really quite rare, or that they are permissible if unsavory, then that looks like a good trade. If not, then it looks like leaving a loophole for sickos.

There is no 'Texas style ambiguity'. Texas bans abortions that aren't medically necessary. The high profile cases had no doubt about their case, they just didn't like the rules and wanted to showboat.

Which ones do you have in mind?

  • Crain wasn't ambiguous. The law clearly required a recorded ultrasound, and the first wasn't saved, so they went back for a second.
  • Barnica was similar. Since the delayed stillbirth wasn't guaranteed to kill her, they had to wait until the heartbeat stopped.
  • Cox was ambiguous. Nobody involved could figure out if they were going to face prosecution. I'm not even sure if Paxton knew what he'd do, which is why he warned the doctors through Twitter.
  • Ngumezi I hadn't even heard about. She died after being prescribed a miscarriage drug rather than a faster but politically-fraught D&C. Note that the doctor responsible has been disciplined, but still practices.
  • There are apparently others in Ngumezi's situation who haven't received tearful ProPublica coverage. Did I miss something high-profile?

The state has made it clear that anything which looks like an abortion will receive extra scrutiny and political pressure, legal or not. Doctors have responded by shying away from the procedures which are most offensive to lawmakers. This is an obvious chilling effect!

@The_Nybbler will tell you that all of these were unambiguous, that the doctors responsible are immoral cowards, or worse, leftists, and that obviously the state would never make life difficult for an innocent man. I think, in my reasonable judgment, that he's full of shit.

Crain is a case where a combination of clinical incompetence and what were in effect paperwork requirements (even if they required an additional scan to meet under the circumstances) for a medically necessary abortion permitted under Texas law led to lifesaving treatment being delayed with, as it turned out, fatal results. Ngumezi was straightforward malpractice - giving a pregnant woman who doesn't qualify for a medically necessary abortion abortion pills is just as illegal as doing a D&C, and more likely to have bad clinical outcomes.

In both cases, the doctors involved were subject to professional discipline. I think disciplining the Crain doctors is a bad idea, but I understand why the Texan authorities think it is a valuable face-saving measure. The message of Crain is now that if you are a doctor or hospital administrator in Texas, you should do anything you can to stop miscarrying women going anywhere near your hospital, as there is no medico-legally way of treating them. And hospitals trying to keep hard cases off the premises will lead to more Crain-type deaths.

Barnica was an entirely correct application of Texas law as it existed at the time. At the time she would have had the moribund fetus removed under non-Texan standards of care, there wasn't a life-threatening emergency - she became septic after the heartbeat stopped. Texas has since changed their law so this shouldn't happen again, although other red states have not.

Cox is something different - it was a case involving a non-viable fetus and there was never a real risk to the mother beyond the inherent risk of pregnancy. The Texas abortion law doesn't have an exception for non-viable fetuses and this is intentional on the part of the Christian pro-life movement that wrote it. Paxton's grandstanding over the case, while ghoulish, was entirely correct as a matter of Texas law, was popular with the pro-life conservative base, and probably contributed to him winning his recent Senate primary. I don't think it will be a major contributor to his losing the general to Talarico, although it should be.

It is tempting to believe that like leftists, rightists will engage in ridiculous contortions, twisting plain language to go after their enemy. And if that were true, abortion would certainly be the issue in which they would. But to my surprise the evidence of this is lacking; one interesting data point is that when an abortion law looked like it threatened IVF, Alabama fell over itself (overcorrecting, IMO) to avoid that. One might reasonably believe that Ken Paxton himself might be overzealous, but I believe he would have no support in Texas courts.

You've linked to the specific statute before, and I don't think ProPublica (or the doctors involved) are operating under a good-faith analysis. "Guaranteed" is nowhere near the strict text of "in the exercise of reasonable medical judgment, the pregnant female on whom the abortion is performed, induced, or attempted has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced." Similarly, the "recorded ultrasound" requirement is actually "d) A physician making a determination under Subsection (b) shall record in the pregnant woman's medical record: (1) the estimated gestational age of the unborn child; (2) the method used to estimate the gestational age; and (3) the test used for detecting a fetal heartbeat, including the date, time, and results of the test."

And at least for ProPublica, that's not a one-off: ProPublica's coverage of Amber Thurman in Georgia was aggressively misleading, and its own staff defended the article not by claiming they had evidence to support it, but by motioning around how it could be possible.

I'd be a little more forgiving if Texas (Paxton or otherwise) had been going nuts with dubious prosecutions, but the only actual charges or serious threats of prosecution I can find are the Rojas cluster, and that entire thing has been more a mess for Texas than for the alleged abortion-provider.

More comments

Doctors have responded by shying away from the procedures which are most offensive to lawmakers. This is an obvious chilling effect!

Indeed, you've changed my mind about it. If doctors are soldiers, we can note that indeed, soldiers have a harder time dealing with the enemy when overly-restrictive ROE are imposed. Friendlies get hurt, even killed, if you can't deal with cases where it's obvious to the soldier on the ground who the enemy is, but not to the politicians back home.

But then, what is to be done? Establishing a military-style court in the form of review with primacy over the criminal justice system won't fix the problem (soldiers get railroaded all the time there too), doctors (and more importantly, the organizations paying them) don't want to take that risk, and you have a major fraction of the population doing the Queers for Palestine thing about babies (perhaps even literally albeit unintentionally; Jews do tend to become doctors). Maybe a Red state should only employ Red tribe soldiers/doctors so that the kind of cultural clash presented here is minimized, but even that's no guarantee, for the US was Red from 2000-2008 and [as I understand it] the shift to Blue coincided with more restricted ROE simply because the average soldier was Red.

Maybe the best choice, or the only choice, is simply to accept that living in Texas has certain occupational hazards; to accept that the optimal number of doctors prosecuted for questionable abortions is not, and will not, be zero; and to make sure there's still some semblance of a West to run off to when there's no mind left in the nation to be changed about it.

There was also some cases (Nevaeh Crain and Josseli Barnica) clearly within Texas's rules, but doctors claimed there was ambiguity and let the patient suffer and die to make a political point.

This suggests that “legalize abortion up to the moment of crowning” was not really what “the Left wanted.” It’s more like a side effect of 1) avoiding Texas-style ambiguity and 2) countersignaling that they aren’t like those icky red states.

You don't need to remove gestational limits to avoid Texas style ambiguity, nor does having them mean you are like a red state. Many of these states who have no gestational limits were like that pre dobbs.

I guess you more or less disputing, from what i can see now, about whether or not the left wanted that. But if they did not want that, they wouldnt have done it.

There is no insinuation that anyone involved would be happy about a D&E.

Would you extend this much charity to a crowd you weren't already sympathetic to?

The insinuation is that they just don't care. They cheered at the signing of the bill. I do not feel the need to see them cheer at the actual D&E.

They also don’t really connect to suicide or organ donor laws on the left.

Is there a word for this "you are not allowed to draw revealed conclusions to the left" thing?

Reminds me a little of the "I'm not for open borders; I just vehemently oppose all enforcement and refuse to describe any enforcement I'd find tolerable" attitude.

EDIT:

They also don’t really connect to suicide or organ donor laws on the left.

"Life is meaningless at the beginning, it's meaningless at the end, and we won't help you figure out what it's supposed to mean in between" is a helluva philosophy.

Would you extend this much charity

Yes. Something like “the right wants to punish women for having sex” would be a ridiculous claim, even if some laws occasionally have that effect. Even when some of the fringe will cheerfully say as much! I believe conservatives when they say they really want to stop the baby murders.

Massachusetts says that this law is supposed to reduce uncertainty in an already-tragic situation. In doing so, it creates the possibility for an abortion right up before crowning. I hope that never happens, and I would be disturbed and disgusted if it did—but it is not the goal of the law. Polling suggests most Americans think like I do, and support bans with exceptions rather than unrestricted abortion. I expect most residents of Massachusetts would feel the same way.

I hope that never happens, and I would be disturbed and disgusted if it did

You will be disturbed and disgusted thousands of times a year, then.

it is not the goal of the law

If the rule brought you to this...

What makes you say that?

Most abortions are performed before 14 weeks. In 2021, there were about 4,000 performed at or after 21 weeks. See table 10 at the end of this report. They tail off fast, too. The number of abortions after the second trimester, let alone right up to birth, has to be really low.

To be clear, I do think abortions past the point of viability are immoral. I do recognize that laws like MA’s will allow more of those. What I’m trying to say is that allowance is unlikely to be used. Later abortions are more traumatic, more dangerous, more expensive. They are already heavily disincentivized at 20 weeks. If you have reason to believe otherwise, please tell me!

Polling suggests most Americans think like I do, and support bans with exceptions rather than unrestricted abortion.

Bans with exceptions are the popular, median position. I suspect it's probably something like an intensive activist core pushing as far as possible, and politicians (who may or may not share the fervor) granting the win because no one bothers to read the text of bills. It's easy to spin positively and almost trivial with a compliant media. We had plenty of disingenuous articles about purported tragedies resulting from post-Dobbs bans. I would predict that even if it happened, we would never see an article about a woman getting a 7-9 month abortion because it interfered with Coachella from any outlet further left than Fox News.

It is a little ridiculous

No it very manifestly is not.

We are watching mainstream Democrats pivot from "Don't be ridiculous that would never happen." to "Yes it's happening and that's a good thing." in the space of an election cycle.

I don’t find this framing to be especially persuasive since Massachusetts is apparently the 10th state to do it, and laws of the other similar states all pre-date the 2024 election. If the mainstream democratic position was “don’t be ridiculous, [passing such a law] would never happen” then they were factually wrong then, and nothing really changed in the space of an election cycle.

The steelman is that the mainstream democratic positions are actually “don’t be ridiculous, [the late-term elective abortions with zero medical reason] would never happen” and “Yes, it’s good we passed this law because it reduces the red-tape for late-term abortions for medical reasons”. These two positions are not internally contradictory.

For what it’s worth, I do not agree with this new law because I think it would actually lead to elective late-term abortions and I would prefer they kept the previous version, similar to California’s abortion laws.

Generally, from what I've seen the steelman is, "If a woman wanted to abort for purely elective reasons she would have done so earlier in the pregnancy. These laws just make doctors fear that if they perform an abortion for medical reasons (the baby or mother is extremely unlikely to survive) they'll be put on trial."

Which is one of those things that sounds plausible but not sure how true it is.

Which is one of those things that sounds plausible but not sure how true it is.

It bullshit, they have caught people going over gestational limits before. But going beyond that, most countries have gestational limits, and the idea that having them will put women in danger or make it hard for doctors makes no sense, given that fact.

These laws just make doctors fear that if they perform an abortion for medical reasons (the baby or mother is extremely unlikely to survive) they'll be put on trial.

Ignoring that they could be put on trial for that more generally, of course. Everyone else has a reasonable fear that in a self-defense case this will occur anyway, and isn't that generally the justification the pro-abortion side trots out?

So the hospitals that pre-emptively prohibit the procedure are generally either just grandstanding (re: "Blues think they're the only bastion of civilization in a hostile country"), or are sunk into the tarpit of (Blue-style) extreme risk-aversion by banning the practice. Which they're incentivized to do, since this can give their side a few graves to stand on to enable the grandstanding, even though those deaths are ultimately caused by them and their power structure being insane people.

they were factually wrong

Lying. They were lying. Ralph Northam, everyone that defended him, et cetera and so forth, all lying.

These two positions are not internally contradictory.

Hypocrisy is not the only offense in the world, and it's unenforceable against people who do not share one's own moral precepts.

I'm frankly surprised the numbers are so low globally. Switzerland has had euthanasia for decades, and yet most elderly people there still die by very slow decay, with only 2-3% choosing the less painful, more dignified option.

I think comparing gun deaths in the US to MAID deaths in Canada is pretty facile. The age breakdown for MAID looks like this. Young and middle-aged people are tiny rounding errors compared to the overwhelming majority who are elderly. US gun deaths are the opposite, for both suicides and murders.

My grandfather was euthanised. Not legally mind you, this was in the UK in the 90s. But he had terminal cancer and had been given a year to live. He spent it taking lots of holidays and seeing his grandchildren as much as he could. All of my memories of him are from that year.

One year later, right on time, his health rapidly deteriorated. My dad had to drive him to the hospital and wasn't sure if he'd even make the trip, but he did.

Lying in the hospital bed, the doctor asked him: 'As we discussed Mr Crowstep?'

'As we discussed.'

The family left the room, and he was pronounced dead a few minutes later.

I've heard a lot of anti-euthanasia arguments, from people whose beliefs I generally agree with. I understand the points about normalisation, about old people feeling like a burden, getting pressured into euthanasia by grasping relatives and struggling health services. I even get the religious arguments, even though I don't believe in the supernatural.

But it's impossible for me to think about the overwhelming majority of us, the billions who will face an end where bodies and minds are dismantled bit by bit, by the cruel hand of entropy, and say to them:

'No, you have to suffer'.

I certainly know what my grandfather would say to them.

The equilibrium that ruled until just recently was pretty good. There’s no practical way for the state to stop you from offing yourself, reliable methods abound. So if you want to, you pretty much can, and you hope that God will forgive you on the other side.

There are those who are so infirm that they can’t go out by their own hand, but it turns out you can’t accommodate them without also letting doctors kill healthy but depressed twenty six year old women.

The trade off of not allowing a very small population to contract someone to kill them seems worth it to keep all the negatives of legal euthanasia at bay.

As others mentioned, the vast majority of those partaking in euthanasia are the elderly and (I presume) infirm, rather than depressed young women. The negatives are far smaller and more narrow than the positives.

We will most of us be old and infirm one day, barring miracle medical advances. Yet only a small fraction of us will be the exact fraction of depressed that having euthanasia makes a difference between pushing through it or getting MAID.

Granted, true, but that's after only of couple of years of current practices in Canada. Add bureaucratic and generational inertia, and I see that these things tend to swing more extreme in span of decades. The historical trend of news from the Netherlands used to be that every few years or so there was a court decision about a new group of people who can get killed by the doctors: In the 1980s it was cases of "90-year old ladies with incurable cancer" which slowly ticked from there to "yes, depressed young people can get killed by the doctors".

Another example. It is observable in many Western secular countries that marriage used to be viewed as a serious matter after the divorce became easier, but marriage rates fall when the kids who grew up in the divorce regime are adults. In France among women born in 1980s and later, "marriage" is a minority practice .

I am today convinced that in ethical matters, the human society has no tolerance for uncomfortable complexities of grey areas or context-dependent decisions or tradeoffs (such as, assisted suicide can be a reasonable choice for an infirm 90-year old to make, when he or she is of sound mind and has only death by painful sickness to look forward to), but public policy converges to naive deontological equilibria (either everyone who qualifies through some bureaucratic checklist will get killed by their doctors because the checklist absolves everyone of moral responsibility, or even people who are slowly dying in unmitigable pain can't be offered assistance contrary to their wishes because next of kin are delusional of death).

everyone who qualifies through some bureaucratic checklist will get killed by their doctors because the checklist absolves everyone of moral responsibility

I am yet to see anyone* being "killed by their doctors" whose lives weren't already contingent on continued medical care, unless very esoteric definitions of killing are applied (such as "offered euthanasia and had it accepted"). I call that "abandoned by their doctors", and in the end someone is always getting abandoned as long as we have scarcity and conditions that can't be cured.

*Organ harvester Georg who commits murder and covers it up obviously does not count.

Because you staunchly refuse to acknowledge what's in front of your own eyes..

Oh, you're claiming that there is no difference between a doctor ending a patient's life by their own judgement is no different than the patient deciding to. What a spectacularly disingenous claim. But, yeah, we have the Canadian government on video browbeating patients to accept MAID even when they're just there for treatment; it was literally posted here. If you're not going to argue in good faith, why are you here?

I assume you are proposing "patient surely takes the deadly poison by themselves if he/she is able to do so"? Sure, that is reasonable and happens, but it is one of those reasonable-sounding things that get abandoned. For example, I think in the Netherlands the usual practice is that after the paperwork is done, "the patient" can just lie down comfortable and the doctor administers sedative and deadly stuff through the IV. Link Which is, in my view, killing the person. You can kill people who request to be killed, but it is still act of killing, if the words are to have any meaning.

No, I don't draw any meaningful difference between the patient throwing the switch and the doctor doing so. Whoever's will is being done is the one doing the killing.

"Doctors killing people" is as far as I can tell a rhetorical trick by pro-lifers to paint a picture of uncaring monsters who strap you into a chair and jab you with the death syringe as soon as you admit any shred of bad quality of life. Plus maybe the useful autists carrying water for them.

Oh well, if we're swapping anecdotes...

My father had a sudden, drastic collapse. Rushed to hospital. Kidney failure, the works. Comatose or damn near it. Heart stopped and he had to be resuscitated. Doctors then broached "look he's very bad, do you want us to resuscitate if this happens again or you know you could just let nature take its course hint hint". My mother said more or less "Hell no" and the family demanded he be resuscitated. Happened twice more. When he was eventually discharged, it was pretty obvious the hospital thought they were sending him home to die.

Well, he didn't. Thanks to my mother and me, we nursed him back to health and he had ten more good years of life. He was on dialysis for those years, but he had recovered so well that his consultant used to brag about him to the student doctors as "my miracle man". We the family smiled and muttered under our breaths "yeah you guys wanted to kill him off, we stopped you".

If we had listened to the doctors, we would have let him die and lost those final ten years of life. By the time he came to die, it was natural: he'd been gradually fading for a year and even though it was sudden (a blood clot and resultant stroke) by then he was ready to die and we were ready to let him go.

So if euthanasia gets normalised, I do think there will be more pressure on families to "let nature take its course" and preventable deaths will happen.

We the family smiled and muttered under our breaths "yeah you guys wanted to kill him off, we stopped you".

Why are doctors as a whole so evil, I wonder? Aside from the fact that they skew liberal and are probably less Catholic than the general population. Do you know many of them?

For every story like OPs there are probably about 100 ones where an old person is kept in excruciating pain and delirium for months because their family forces doctors to keep them alive beyond any hope of recovery?

I don't think it's evil so much as a combination of 'having seen a lot of dragged-out deaths' and sincerely wanting to be compassionate, plus eventually the stresses over "look, get Grampa out of that bed he's blocking" encourage them towards "let nature take its course".

The really evil ones are the medical ethicists.

I don't think it's evil so much as a combination of 'having seen a lot of dragged-out deaths' and sincerely wanting to be compassionate, plus eventually the stresses over "look, get Grampa out of that bed he's blocking" encourage them towards "let nature take its course".

Isn't that fairly reasonable, then? It's possible that your doctors have seen a hundred, or a thousand patients similar to your father and they suffered greatly in some large majority of cases. And, while nobody is perfect, the medical system (at least in North America, I can only imagine that it's much worse in the EU) already bends over backwards to the point of massive dysfunction to accommodate consent and the wishes of the patients.

I mean, I'm not wishing you had let your dad die, but it's not clear to me that having most of the public following the advice of doctors around euthanasia is a bad thing.

The really evil ones are the medical ethicists.

Again, why do you think this? And do you know many of them? I've probably met somewhere between 5-10 in my life and they're largely focused on arcane minutiae that you will almost certainly never hear or think about.

I'm not sure the anecdotes quite compare. Families/doctors choosing not to resuscitate is very different from allowing people to choose euthanasia for themselves. A fairer example would be if your father had asked not to be resuscitated but the doctors had ignored his request because not resuscitating him would be illegal.

In cases where it's not clear, e.g. Grampa has not previously expressed a wish for euthanasia, I do think relatives can be influenced into "just be compassionate" by trusting the doctors and medical authority. And sometimes that medical authority is motivated by "we need to strip the parts before the carcass gets too stale" and not so much compassion.

The problems around the Liverpool Care Pathway demonstrate that; some medical staff are a little too eager to play God and assist the shuffling off of the mortal coil before the would-be deceased is ready for it. It was meant to be a protocol for hospices and somehow it got turned into "general hospitals decide off their own bat not to give Granny food or water once she turns up with pneumonia and is a certain age":

Particular concern was raised in the Review about reports of patients being denied oral fluids, contrary to the legal requirement to provide basic care:

‘The offer of food and drink by mouth ... must always be offered to patients who are able to swallow without serious risk of choking or aspiration.’

In fact, the LCP guidance was explicit that:

‘... the patient should be supported to take food and fluid by mouth for as long as tolerated.’

The Review also identified reports of withdrawal of nutrition and hydration by drip or tube, without explanation or consultation. Decisions concerning these medical interventions are ‘not clear cut in end-of-life care’. The LCP was clear that ‘a blanket policy of no clinically assisted (artificial) hydration is ethically indefensible’, and that while ‘for many patients clinically assisted nutrition and hydration will not be required, the plan of care should be explained to the patient where appropriate and to the relative or carer.’

Life is a terribly hard thing to give up willingly. It's one thing to 'think' you can be ready to do it, it's another thing to overcome the body and its most primary instinct. This is one of the reasons why the numbers of actual suicides are relatively tiny compared to the sizable number of people who regularly contemplate killing themselves. In one sense - and no one should take this as an encouragement - there's something admirable in the courage in those who do it. Though, dying from pure despair is a terrible thing and should never happen, while euthanasia while terminally/degeneratively ill should happen a lot more, IMO.

Most people die for normal reasons, like terminal illness. If you convert a significant fraction of those deaths into MAID deaths, it is unsurprising if MAID deaths end up outnumbering abnormal causes of death like getting shot. This is pretty irrelevant to the question of how many MAID deaths are bad. (People disagree on exactly which MAID deaths qualify as bad, but "terminal cancer patient in pain chooses to die a couple weeks early" is pretty popular and "person who could have lived a long happy life successfully pursues MAID based on some bullshit condition because it gives institutional approval for suicidal tendencies" is not.) On one hand the raw number of MAID deaths doesn't indicate abuse of the system, on the other hand a high percentage of reasonable MAID deaths doesn't tell us whether or not there is a significant amount of abuse, since you would expect the normal deaths to be the majority regardless.

I'm yet to see anyone try to reconcile "it is ghoulish to euthanise grandma" and "it is ghoulish to keep grandma on abysmal QALY life support that costs $100,000s for 2 more decades". Perhaps we should reintroduce death by exposure. If it's hunger and the elements killing grandma, then no one is staining their hands with sin, right?

"it is ghoulish to euthanise grandma" and "it is ghoulish to keep grandma on abysmal QALY life support that costs $100,000s for 2 more decades"

I believe that both are very ghoulish. I am basically an atheist (with some agnostic longing to believe in my weakest moments) and maybe it's a remnant of my Christian childhood but I believe euthanizing grandma as an economic consideration is the most evil option of all. It's just hideous. If I were religious I would just insist that if God wanted to take the person out they'd take the person out otherwise society or the family or the infirm must foot the bill as it's God's will for them not to be dead. And why are no religious people on this board making this exact argument? It makes me question everyone's faith as I believe it's a perfectly good argument (though I don't think it would be very convincing of most irreligious rationalists and the like.) As I don't have the religious idea to lean on the best I can defend my position from is that it is arrogant for humans to make the decision to end the elderly's life for the convenience of the group and that we should only do this when utterly necessary and even then ought to be very careful about consequences and the philosophical implications (which people time and time again prove themselves incapable of doing.)

On the other hand I do suspect that throughout history in tribal or early societies that the elderly when they became a burden were killed or left to die by close relatives, which while I think is disturbing and should be only done when necessary for the group, is defendable if it is in a situation where it's necessary. I don't think a rich country like Canada needs to euthanize people so the poor can eat, no one is suffering there to that degree today.

More broadly I am maximally repulsed at euthanatia by the state or even by the medical system. If you don't have the motivation to end it without a bureaucratic process to assist you then you probably don't want to die badly enough. It has been over a decade since I was truly suicidal but the act of dying was always a last ditch grasping for agency and the thought of even giving up the agency for ultimate control on your life is baffling and disturbing to me. I just can't relate

Usually the religious argument I encounter is that grandma's body failing is God's will and expending copious effort to keep her alive through all the heart attacks, bedriddenness and dementia is going against it.

Again, is it just the active act of killing that irks you? Would leaving grandma in the hospital bed without the ventilator and IVs (other than painkiller) be fine?

That's a great point and not something I imagined as I was writing my other comment. I was imagining mainly situations where an elderly person would be living fine but with a poor quality of life without significant external medical treatment. In the event that the medical treatment is necessary for life then at that point I imagine it's just as bad to extend their life as it is to take it away early. I realize this is a difficult place to draw the line and I'm glad I am not involved in the medical industry at all, and I hope that when people are forced to make these decisions they're doing it with the benefits of their close relatives and loved ones in mind.

It is not "just the active act of killing" that irks me, it is the self righteousness that any person could have an insight greater than nature or god's will to dole out death, especially as an economic concern.

'I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.’

Which is to say that nature's idea of optimal human life is "nasty, brutish and short" and I do not care much about how hubristic it is for individuals to interfere unless they do worse on at least two out of three.

How I see it, nature's idea of optimal human life is what it is now. Nature wants humans to interfere, it wants "fit" species to survive (defined by their survival). But preserving elderly who waste resources and seem to be unaware and unhappy, it doesn't help us or seem to be helping them, and nature is leaving the decision to collective us.

The "ghoulish proposal" is in this case is doing away with the Dead Donor Rule and expanding MAID explicitly as a means of increasing access to donor organs.

I thought the post was talking about people stuck in comas on indefinite life support, or simply put "vegetables". Everything I'd heard on this forum before would suggest that people were mostly against spending doctor-hours and money on such hopeless and fruitless cases.

It's hard to reconcile on purity grounds, which 'ghoulish' evokes. But it's not hard on more practical grounds, like "It's bad to euthanise terminally ill grandma, because that sets us on a slippery slope where we're euthanizing Mom because she's got killer migraines and Sis because feeling depressed"

(all the MAID horror stories I've seen are women, but that may just be reporting bias; almost no one cares if a mostly healthy guy offs himself, with help or without)

Thinking about that slippery slope and the hard cases that introduce it, maybe the structure we want is that mercy killing should be illegal and prosecuted by the legal system, but it always remains a possibility for individual action. Someone knows their parent is in incredible pain and wants to die: it's then their prerogative to perform the killing themselves, taking the moral weight of the act onto themselves. It's a decision that's incredibly weighty and a lot to ask of someone, but that's exactly what we want anyway instead of offloading it onto society and the bureaucratic apparatuses to make it routine. And if the killing is discovered with lots of evidence pointing to the person who did it, it's prosecutable.

It's then up to a jury to decide legal guilt, and they can judge the "cancer patient in extreme pain somehow receives an OD of a painkiller" and the "20 year old TikToker with a terminal case of POTS is killed" differently.

maybe the structure we want is that mercy killing should be illegal and prosecuted by the legal system, but it always remains a possibility for individual action.

This sort of thing is a cry for tyranny. Legal things should be legal, not illegal but overlooked if the right people find it convenient to do so.

You misread me: I said that mercy killing should be illegal and prosecuted. But, if sometimes illegal things are still the moral thing, someone can choose to do the illegal thing and bear the potential consequences if they're certain it's still right. I don't think the person is expected or required to make it easy for the government to prosecute them for the crime, but the government should earnestly do so with the tools at its disposal.

If the option of euthanizing Mom for killer migraines wasn't available, would actual migraine treatment be more available?

Personally I'm in favor of actually fighting against encroachment on the cases which you think are too far, rather than relying on outraged Christian pro-life gesticulating and "slippery slope" blanket denial then acting like Surprised Pikachu when that wasn't enough.

relying on outraged Christian pro-life gesticulating and "slippery slope" blanket denial

Well friend, as soon as people step up to fight for better medical care, then we outraged Christians won't be carrying it all on our own and the particular level of moral purity you want for the cause will be better calibrated to your needs and preferences.

Personally I'm in favor of actually fighting against encroachment on the cases which you think are too far

The point of "slippery slope" is this doesn't work. Once the principle has been yielded, you can fight all you want but you're going to slip down the slope.

Yes, that's what those advocating that some particular change is a slippery slope say.

"We've already established that you're a whore, now we're just haggling over the price".

Give in on "well okay some lives are not worth living" and you have no defence when the inch becomes a foot, then a yard, then a mile, each time the argument for extension is "but you already agreed we could do this, we just need a teeny little bit more".

The defense is "I am not giving more than an inch because I prefer it that way". It doesn't have to be based on principles. In fact principled arguments are the brittle ones as we can see here in the first place - they hold until they don't, and then suddenly the conservative, lacking a branch to grab on and having no practice in digging his heels in in any arbitrary spot, "has no defense".

Instead of staking everything on being or not being a whore, perhaps some people should learn to haggle.

Oh I have plenty of conservative principles and I'm holding tight to them. Helps to be Catholic, because even though Western Catholicism amongst the laity (and the late Boomer/Gen X generation of post-Vatican II clergy and religious) is loosey-goosey, the official positions of the Church still hold even amongst all the "now let's just be sensible and modern and accommodating and relevant to the needs of today" persuasion going on, and those are backed up by quoted principles.

You may disagree with those principles, but it can't be denied that they are principles and not just "well I kinda feel this is the way it should be".

Haggling over whoring leads to "sex work is real work" and OnlyFans and the plaints (many and numerous) on here about "why no date for I? why no wife and kiddies? why women not reply on dating apps?"

A terminally ill grandma being euthanised is a tragedy, a healthy young man offing himself is a statistic—just like if he got forced off to war and blown up, perished in a workplace accident, or got bustled to death by random street crime.

Perhaps the way to square the circle is to frame it as an accessibility question for war volunteers, not euthanasia. Why should the terminally ill grandma or the depressed TikToker be denied their opportunity to die to defend Democracy in Ukraine, if they want to? If need be, we can roll their wheelchair straight into the flight path of a Russian drone, and (at $300 surcharge) even let them hold a rifle in their last moments for the aesthetics. Maybe the Russians can be persuaded to play along and provide a preagreed time and place in return for partial sanctions relief.

(I don't know what percentage of pro-lifers also has a categorical revulsion towards making women fight in a war, but surely it is much less than 100?)

Now let's all chant together "There is no such thing as the slippery slope!"

Yeah, Canadian MAID is what I expected. But I'm just a dumb conservative traditionalist pro-lifer, what do I know? We're sawing off the branches we're sitting on but don't worry, we will continue to float in mid-air while all the nasty old dead wood tumbles away!

Why keep the useless vegetables on life support when we could strip them for parts? Trust The Science! Believe The Experts! A technocracy would be so much more efficient and better run as a society!

Fortunately, there is a relatively new method that can improve the efficacy of donation after circulatory death. In this procedure, which is called normothermic regional perfusion, doctors take an irreversibly comatose donor off life support long enough to determine that the heart has stopped beating permanently — but then the donor is placed on a machine that circulates oxygen-rich blood through the body to preserve organ function. Donor organs obtained through this procedure, which is used widely in Europe and increasingly in the United States, tend to be much healthier.

But by artificially circulating blood and oxygen, the procedure can reanimate a lifeless heart. Some doctors and ethicists find the procedure objectionable because, in reversing the stoppage of the heart, it seems to nullify the reason the donor was declared dead in the first place. Is the donor no longer dead, they wonder?

Proponents of the procedure reply that the resumption of the heartbeat should not be considered resuscitation; the donor still has no independent functioning, nor is there any hope of it. They say that it is not the donor but rather regions of the body that have been revived. How to resolve this debate? The solution, we believe, is to broaden the definition of brain death to include irreversibly comatose patients on life support. Using this definition, these patients would be legally dead regardless of whether a machine restored the beating of their heart.

I find myself lacking the vocabulary to describe my growing sense of unease

The word you are looking for is "evil", and I to struggled to put into words what I saw happening in the world around me, or develop any sort of causal explanation, until I reached for that word. There is a reason there has been a generational project by progressives in education to put that word out of your cognitive reach. You should take it back, and use it often and proud. Because evil is real, and that's exactly where your "unease" is coming from.

There is a reason there has been a generational project by progressives in education to put that word out of your cognitive reach.

[citation needed]. I see them use it as enthusiastically as ever, it's just that they just it for different things (as you would expect from people with different values).

The word you are looking for is "evil"

Oh no, WhiningCoil. That is nasty judgementalism when people are only being compassionate and accepting!

I've had decades of listening to the pushback and insults around the Catholic Church's opposition to abortion, so I am both inured to the tactics and grimly validated in what we stick-in-the-muds were warning all along. You start loosening the bolts. You pull down the fence. You cut down those trees in the way. It's all done in the name of compassion, and nobody thinks it will affect anyone except the (carefully chosen and cherry-picked) few hard cases you selected to get the laws changed and societal acceptance.

Divorce is a tragedy and marriage should be for life, but do you want to keep women stuck in abusive marriages? It will never affect marriage itself! Abortion will only be for the few cases where delivering the pregnancy would kill the mother. Birth control will only be used by responsible married couples to delay and space out their families. Gay marriage will have no effect on you. Trans people are only a tiny percentage of the population, they never did anything to you. So giving in on this one thing will not do anything except help the few desperate cases.

It won't lead to normalisation and acceptance. It won't be the first step towards the next hard case that needs compassionate understanding. Abortion won't become "it's not a baby, it's only a clump of cells" or "it's a baby if you want it, it's not a baby if you don't want it". It won't have the knock-on effect of devaluing all life. Euthanasia is compassion for the terminally ill who want to avoid gasping out their last few weeks in horrible pain. It will never be something where gradually lowering the age limits will be proposed. Granting limited rights to this minority will never be the first stepping-stone to increasing demands. Granting expanded rights will never be used as a playbook for a different minority.

There is no such thing as the slippery slope and only bigots and haters pretend there is. Nothing will change once we loosen this bolt, the machine will continue to function exactly as it always has. See, everything is fine after that bolt was loosened, that means we can remove it altogether! See, the machine is still running even with that bolt gone, let's loosen a few more bolts. Okay, now the machine is making funny noises, but that only means we haven't loosened enough bolts.

The people making these arguments and saying there's no such thing as a slippery slope don't seem to consider at all what incentives are or how people respond to them.

While this number does not include self-inflicted gunshots (IE Suicides)

And why the hell wouldn't we include those if we're speaking about medically assisted suicide? That makes no sense, the only answer is that otherwise the stats don't look like a headline.

Also, the Canadian number doesn't really rise eyebrows. That's roughly 5% of all deaths, a bit lower than Netherlands' number, a bit higher than Belgium. Both have stringent rules (terminal, suffering with no chance of improvement, voluntary and well considered, review committee affirms), so I'm not too worried about a healthcare system running quick and cheap cost optimization...

In all 3 countries the rate is rising quickly, which doesn't surprise me. I've already decided to take that route for a long list of possible future diagnosis, as have many of my family members. A growing part of society seems to have come up the same conclusion.

It's not medically assisted suicide. It's not like Kevorkian sets up the machine and then you push the button. The doctor just comes in a 10:45 as per your appointment, kills you, and then bills the taxpayer for 70$ per 15-minute unit.

Both have stringent rules (terminal, suffering with no chance of improvement, voluntary and well considered, review committee affirms), so I'm not too worried about a healthcare system running quick and cheap cost optimization...

Except as I noted in the subsequent links, the medical establishment is actively lobbying to do loosen those rules, and the DHHS is actively investigating Network for Hope for stripping patients for parts.

Don't all three countries have very regular horror stories about well known conscientious objectors being euthanized?

And why the hell wouldn't we include those if we're speaking about medically assisted suicide?

Very different things that sometimes fall under one label, at the end of the day. But it is a bit of gerrymandering to create an interesting stat, I'd agree.

In all 3 countries the rate is rising quickly

Depends on perspective. The Netherlands took 30 years for it to reach 5ish% of deaths, Canada took less than 10.

But it is a bit of gerrymandering to create an interesting stat, I'd agree.

It was quite literally a trivia question.

well i didn't mean you did the gerrymandering, it's fun trivia! Sparked an interesting conversation and lots of thought.

I'm not necessarily a fan of MAID as administered presently since I feel the particular construction is less efficient than just 'Let's not fund certain tilts at slightly delaying death' but I also think that society does definitely fight way too hard for every possible moment in the face of some issues.

I've already decided to take that route for a long list of possible future diagnosis, as have many of my family members.

I don't think I know a single person who would choose losing their memories and identity and becoming a drooling vegetable instead of a dignified death should they start to suffer from significant dementia etc.

It's a weird vision of dignity that considers MAID death dignified. If you went to garage and shot yourself, whatever your thoughts about the morality of suicide, at least you went out on your own terms. But with MAID (at least in Canada) you have to ask a grown-up for permission, and then they come and kill you and collect their fee. It's not messy, it's not as hard to watch as slow death from dementia, but it's not dignified in Nietzschean heroic Master morality sense. It might be dignified in some conceptions of slave-morality ("I asked permission and the authorities granted my request, but I didn't do it myself. I was a Good Boy") but all that slave morality is the stuff telling you not to do it in the first place.

It's a weird vision of dignity that suggests prioritizing what Nietzscheans will think is "going out on your own terms" while hiring a professional isn't. Suppose I value not having my family clean up my headless corpse more than I value the opinions of tough guys.

"You ask a grown-up for permission" - as if you don't do that every time you exchange money for goods and services.

I have no children, loved ones or friends who would take care of me when I can no longer look after myself, so I want a quick painless death when my health starts to irreversibly decline. Preferably by barbiturate overdose. Will an American doctor sell me that? Not likely.

Just kill yourself like a man. Don't get them to send you over the Rainbow Bridge like a pet.

If I could legally buy Veronal or other heavy downers I'd do that. But I won't do anything painful or messy, or that might hurt other people like jumping from a high place.

No children, loved ones or friends? Sounds like the exact demographic that gets euthanized because of depression long before their health starts to irreversibly decline.

Well, I might do it before that if the DSA gets in power and fucks up the economy, Salvador Allende-style. Or if the university library closes permanently.

You don’t even need to be a pro-life religious type to prefer being a drooling vegetable. The rationalists do things like measure the happiness of shrimp. To me it’s a simple question would I rather exists or disappear. The worst existence seems better than not being me.

Quite an intense assertion. Most people fold under torture, the suicide rate for people with (ex) chronic, splitting migraines is high enough that you can get FDA waivers for drug development. I've felt pain before that is, to me, obviously worth killing myself over if I have to feel it for the foreseeable future.

I don't think I know a single person who would choose losing their memories and identity and becoming a drooling vegetable instead of a dignified death should they start to suffer from significant dementia etc.

Hi, would you like to get to know me? This is a ridiculous claim, along the lines of "I don't know anyone who voted for Nixon" or Scott Alexander's example of how he doesn't know any creationists. It's a very strong sign that you live in a filter bubble. I (and billions of others) believe human life inherently has value, and should not be intentionally ended outside of some very specific circumstances (i.e. self defense, capital punishment, etc.). Would a part of me prefer to die if I started declining into dementia? Of course, I saw my own grandpa suffer from Alzheimer's and become a shell of who he used to be, it's horrifying. But I will not take intentional steps to cause my own death there, let alone be such a massive mewling pussy that I make someone else kill me.

As a side note, I've always found statements like "dignified death" and "dying with dignity" concerning, because to me dignity has very little to do with what happens to me and far more to do with how I handle it. Once again, for billions of people, this is one of the most dignified moments in all of human history: https://www.artatberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/cache/images/ARTatBerlin-Die-Kreuzigung-Christi-Hans-Baldung-Grien/ARTatBerlin-Die-Kreuzigung-Christi-Hans-Baldung-Grien-1869810459.jpg

Once again, for billions of people, this is one of the most dignified moments in all of human history

believe human life inherently has value, and should not be intentionally ended outside of some very specific circumstances (i.e. self defense, capital punishment, etc.).

Would it help you if the government defines the crime of wanting euthanasia as consisting of

a) Wanting euthanasia and

b) being terminally ill and satisfying any other ethical requirements you can think someone should have before administering it

as a capital crime punishable by death by euthanasia? We could ordain doctors as special judges that can convict someone of this particular crime.

By the way, do you worship Jesus Christ or your government? You pay lip service to Jesus but seem to be more into Pontius Pilate and his men. Saints don't defend themselves, the soldiers that crucified Jesus as capital punishment do.

By the way, do you worship Jesus Christ or your government? You pay lip service to Jesus but seem to be more into Pontius Pilate and his men. Saints don't defend themselves, the soldiers that crucified Jesus as capital punishment do.

You're doing the thing:

https://i.redd.it/j3ts5gx0ptgg1.jpeg

I can tell your blood is up, but this claim isn't ridiculous. The majority of Americans support euthanasia.

I appreciate your bravery in potentially experiencing a drawn out, painful death that is "natural". But a few points:

  • This is an easier claim to make the younger you are
  • More people than you are affected (as you pointed out with your anecdote). I understand that you believe God is more important than your family, but not everyone subscribes to that.
  • Prolonging your life with expensive technology that other people pay for isn't natural either. We can't say pumping blood into a corpse is gross on one hand and then declare that being on a ventilator for 5 years is definitely the right way to die.

If one in twenty deaths in a country were caused by suicide or deaths of despair, that would be headline news. Somehow it's ho-hum when it's medically assisted suicide.

"That didn't happen and if it did, it's a good thing".

Symptom of a society that has solved many causes of early death. The reality on the ground in a hospice ward or a dementia care facility makes this number seem low. If you know any medical professionals, ask them what they'd do with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's or multiple myeloma.

There's no glory in a slow and painful death.

If you have hard data showing that the overwhelming majority of MAiD recipients are older people who've been diagnosed with terminal and/or degenerative conditions, I would love to see it.

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications/health-system-services/annual-report-medical-assistance-dying-2024.html

For track 1 requests (natural death reasonably foreseeable), which made up 95% of such requests, 86.5% of recipients were over 65. For track 2 requests (mental health/chronic conditions and the like), 78.4% of recipients were over 65.

For those who received MAID under Track 1, cancer was the most frequently cited medical condition (n=10,035), followed by "other" conditions (n=3,928), then cardiovascular conditions, such as congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation or vasculopathy (n=2,703). For Track 2, the most frequently indicated medical conditions were neurological conditions (n=378), "other" conditions (n=375) and cardiovascular conditions (n=94)

Thank you.

If you have hard data showing that the overwhelming majority of MAiD recipients are younger people in the prime of their life, I would love to see it.

That's not a claim I made.

Both have stringent rules (terminal, suffering with no chance of improvement

False, Canada's track 2 euthanasia is applicable to non-terminal cases, and next year it will be extended to purely mental health cases, unless it's delayed again (it was originally planned for 2024, but was delayed to 2027).

voluntary and well considered

Words on paper, there's no evidence that it's either, and the medical profession in general doesn't have a lot of credibility in this topic.

review committee affirms)

What is supposed to be the relevance of this?

False, Canada's track 2 euthanasia is applicable to non-terminal cases

I was talking about Netherlands/Belgium, but translated it badly. They require incurable instead of terminal.

voluntary and well considered

Again, in the non-Canadian case you have to voice the wish repeatedly, a month apart.

What is supposed to be the relevance of this?

Stops a single doctor from sending of people on his own, which is better than the alternative.

In the end, the question is if the process is any harder than just putting a gun into your mouth. I'd say it is, in all three countries.

They require incurable instead of terminal.

That's a big difference. Lots of fairly minor conditions are incurable.

Again, in the non-Canadian case you have to voice the wish repeatedly, a month apart.

First, I find the sudden switch to non-Canada to be a bit out of left field, wasn't the OP about Canada specifically? Why should we suddenly debate Belgium? Researching what's going on there is a fair bit more difficult given that they are non-English speaking countries.

Secondly, on paper this is also the case in Canada. In practice, they already took out someone who changed their mind and requested hospice care.

Stops a single doctor from sending of people on his own, which is better than the alternative.

This is only the case if the institution considers euthanasia as something to be avoided, if they think it's all fine, they'll be waving people through with bureaucratic indifference. Euthanasia is not an isolated case here, pro-trans people were insisting for years that there's rigorous diagnostic process, where there simply wasn't.

I find the sudden switch to non-Canada to be a bit out of left field, wasn't the OP about Canada specifically?

I mean this specific discussion thread started because I mentioned ~5% of all deaths being pretty normal for a western country with legalized assisted suicide. All I wanted to say is that they all have various schemes to regulate access, and they end up with similar rates. If Canada is frequently killing health people to safe money, so are the Euros.

In practice, they already took out someone who changed their mind and requested hospice care.

Criminal, if true.

In the end, suicide (for whatever reason) has always been something humans did. There's many arguments that making it to easy is unnecessarily increasing the number of successful attempt, but most of the time we don't care all that much. Decreasing the pack size of popular sleeping pills, closing the most popular bridges for foot traffic, psych tests for guns... All very inconvenient.

But the cleanest, most dignified path is worth arguing over? Just regulate it, regulate it better, and let people go if they really want to.

Criminal, if true.

Assuming @ArjinFerman is thinking of the same story I am, the sequence of events went something like this. Mrs. Bennet discusses MAID with her Dr. and an assessment is performed but she ultimately decides that she doesn't want to go through with it and submits a request for in-patient hospice care. Mrs. Bennet subsequently takes a turn for the worse and falls into a coma at which point the Dr. "reassessed" her and then euthanized her on the basis of that reassessment. The Bennet family tried to take the doctor to court but never got anywhere because it had all been done legally and above-board.

You're appealing to "rules" and "processes" and "dignity" when a good chunk of my post is about how there is evidence that the rules and processes are not being followed while the medical establishment actively lobbies for their removal.

Are you referring to this? (Case 4b) https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/MDRC-Report-2024.4_Same-Day-Next-Day-Provisions_Final.pdf

Mrs. B was a female in her 80s who had a challenging medical trajectory following coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. She experienced several post-operative sequelae, including wound dehiscence, osteomyelitis, and respiratory failure. She required specialized care in hospital, including additional surgical procedures. Due to physical and functional decline, Mrs. B elected for a palliative approach to care. She was discharged home with palliative supports (i.e., palliative care team and home care support services, including adaptive aids and personal support services). Mrs. B reportedly expressed her desire for MAiD to her family. In response, and on the same day, her spouse contacted a referral service on her behalf. The following day, a MAiD practitioner assessed her for MAiD eligibility. She reportedly told the MAiD assessor that she wanted to withdraw her request, citing personal and religious values and beliefs. She communicated that pursuing in-patient palliative care/hospice care and palliative sedation was more in-keeping with her end-of-life goals.

The next morning, Mrs. B presented to the emergency department (ED) of her local hospital. Her spouse was noted to be experiencing caregiver burnout. Mrs. B was assessed to be in stable condition, and thereby discharged home with continued palliative care. Her palliative care physician completed a referral for in-patient palliative care / hospice care due to her social circumstances (i.e., caregiver burnout). Her request was denied for not meeting hospice criteria for end-of-life, and a long-term care application was offered.

On the same day, Mrs. B’s spouse contacted the provincial MAiD coordination service requesting an urgent assessment. A different MAiD assessor from the previous day completed a primary assessment and determined Mrs. B to be eligible for MAiD. The former MAiD practitioner was contacted. This MAiD practitioner expressed concerns regarding the necessity for ‘urgency’ and shared belief for the need for more comprehensive evaluation, the seemingly drastic change in perspective of end-of-life goals, and the possibility of coercion or undue influence (i.e., due to caregiver burnout). The initial MAiD practitioner requested an opportunity to visit with Mrs. B the following day to re-assess; however, this opportunity was declined by the MAiD provider due to their clinical opinion that the clinical circumstances necessitated an urgent provision. An additional MAiD practitioner was arranged by the MAiD coordination service to complete a virtual assessment. Mrs. B was found eligible for MAiD by this third assessor. The provision of MAiD was completed later that evening.

A MAID assessment requires the person to be conscious and mentally aware. It sounds like the caretaker husband convinced his wife to go through with it after inpatient hospice was denied.

I don't know if that's the same incident, I just remember the court case making the rounds 4 or 5 years ago. One of the kids trying to claim that the Doctor had acted against his mothers wishes or something.

A MAID assessment requires the person to be conscious and mentally aware.

I believe this was one of the facts under contention.

I think "popping filter bubbles" is a misnorner. There is no filter, be it imposed or organic. No new information you reveal will make people go "oh my god, I had no idea, that's horrible!". People look at this and think it's fine, actually.

As for vocabulary, I have plenty, I'm just a bit burnt out seeing it all shrugged off by interlocutors having completely different values.

People look at this and think it's fine, actually.

I saw the other day about Muhammad being the "top boy name" in England and Wales for the third straight year, and I thought- I can't wrap my head around people that don't have a reaction to that. I don't expect everyone to have my reaction to it, but to react with a shrug like it's completely banal?

I'm just a bit burnt out seeing it all shrugged off by interlocutors having completely different values.

Amen. The refusal of people to acknowledge alien values exist and are increasingly common continues to be a major blind spot.

This, in fairness, doesn’t necessarily represent a rapid demographic change- if Uk whites are like US whites, it’s probably mostly white baby names getting dumber more poorly spelled more creative.

While I agree, there is something interesting going on. Euthanasia is similar to surrogacy. It just silently becames a thing and it was barely even discussed. When I opened this topic with my friends, there were quite some differences ranging from this is legalized human trafficking and slavery to nothingburger and hugely beneficial thing. These were opinions of a husband and a wife, and it also surprised them how their view differed on this under the hood change of reality.

Things like these are pushed and normalized constantly, it is akin to gish-galop of policies and regulations - many just pass bellow the radar only to pop-up when they actually cause massive problems. Sometimes these things silently work the other way around, for instance how introduction of body cams for US police officers basically demolished the argument of excess policing. These videos basically replaced Law&Order TV shows and reality shows in one.

Yeah, this is about right. From the other side, this juxtaposition is about as compelling as comparing trendlines of American workplace accidents resulting in loss of limb to Canadian hospital amputations and thinking it will BTFO the commies who support OSHA. ("More people are dismembered each year by Canadian doctors than by American factory floors!")

I just wish people were more open about it. What keeps happening instead is that people construct these elaborate arguments about how strict and rigorous a practice is, implying that their opinion would change if it turned out that it isn't, it turns out it isn't, and then they shrug citing a difference in values, while mocking you for being worried about slippery slopes.

Social conservatives have been Cassandra pretty consistently. Progressives simply declare it a good thing after the fact.

I'm not sure I see the implication that their opinion would change if the practice is not as strict or rigorous. Going solely by form, I would only expect that they make the argument because they think that your opinion would change if it is, which seems like a sensible default if you are trying to argue across value system lines with the intention to win.

(It's a separate question if we, here should expect better. Rationalist values say yes: if you can imagine an argument that would change your mind, you should help the other side make it as best as you can, "that which can be destroyed by the truth should be", Litany of Tarski et cetera. However this is one part of rationalist values that goes deeply against culture warrior values, which say that the last thing you would want is to betray your cause and people by helping others shake your faith.)

Initially I thought this was going to be about medical mistakes. It would be fascinating to see a breakdown of the stated reasons that euthanisees sought MAiD. I would like to think that people with incurable terminal illnesses would be in the majority, if only a slim one.

There was a thread a few weeks ago talking about the concept of a "trans genocide", and I noted that the Wikipedia article on the topic devotes a lot of column inches to the notion that conservative lawmakers might make life so unbearable for trans people that they take their own lives en masse. This would make it the world's first self-administered genocide.

Unless Canada beats them to it. Certainly not what I expected the Day of the Rake to look like.

Initially I thought this was going to be about medical mistakes.

"I often say a great doctor kills more people than a great general." -- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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