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In 2016 ISIS attackers bombed the airport in Brussels killing over a dozen people. A seventeen year old girl was present but uninjured. This May she chose to be euthanized because of her psychological trauma. She was 23 and she had no physical injuries. The news of her death was just announced recently.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/10/10/2016-brussels-attacks-victim-granted-euthanasia-after-years-of-ptsd_5999805_4.html
This seems absolutely insane to me. I don't doubt she was suffering but she was only 23. A lot could have changed over the next 70 years. She wasn't terminally ill, she didn't have cancer, she wasn't paralyzed from the neck down. She was very sad and very scared and had attempted suicide twice. But I know that at least some people who have survived suicide attempts have gone on to lead happy lives.
I used to disapprove of euthanasia but wasn't strongly in favor of making it illegal, even though it was never a choice I would make myself or approve of making for a relative. But cases like this have made me strongly opposed to it. It seems like the medical establishment can't be trusted to restrict it to only the most extreme cases. The people saying that allowing euthanasia is a slippery slope have been proven right in my opinion.
As someone who leans libertarian I people should be allowed to end their lives but the story is disturbing and sad though. A waste of life.
I also lean libertarian and I am against euthanasia.
The society and the state simply cannot be trusted these matters, and the added convenience of legalised euthanasia isn’t worth their involvement. There are going to be all kinds of ugly things from states covering up murders, to vulnerable people being pressured towards it by shrinks or activists or whoever else who profits from this.
If someone really wants to end their life they should procure a gun and do it themselves.
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Let's suppose for a moment that this is a completely rational decision (a whole question in itself which the Liberal framework is ill equipped to deal with).
It's clear that the right to destroy one's own inalienable property exists. But Liberalism is silent on what the good life is, so you can't really use it to evaluate whether killing yourself is a good idea or not.
Best you can say seems to be against this particular scheme, as institutionalizing death means one more possible avenue of control. After all the libertarian answer is already provided by cheap and widely available means of suicide.
I don't see why it being rational has anything to do with it. Preferring Mahler to Brahms, or Elvis to either is not a rational choice, but I'm free to listen to whichever I irrationally prefer provided I'm not blasting it so loudly I'm causing a nuisance to my neighbors.
I'm not using reason to mean intelligence or careful reasoning here, but sanity.
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