spoiler
"... when the Canadian parliament enacted Bill C-7, a sweeping euthanasia law which repealed the ‘reasonably foreseeable’ requirement – and the requirement that the condition should be ‘terminal’. Now, as long as someone is suffering from an illness or disability which ‘cannot be relieved under conditions that you consider acceptable’, they can take advantage of what is now known euphemistically as ‘medical assistance in dying’ (MAID for short) for free.
Soon enough, Canadians from across the country discovered that although they would otherwise prefer to live, they were too poor to improve their conditions to a degree which was acceptable..."
"A woman in Ontario was forced into euthanasia because her housing benefits did not allow her to get better housing which didn’t aggravate her crippling allergies. Another disabled woman applied to die because she ‘simply cannot afford to keep on living’. Another sought euthanasia because Covid-related debt left her unable to pay for the treatment which kept her chronic pain bearable"
"When the family of a 35-year-old disabled man who resorted to euthanasia arrived at the care home where he lived, they encountered ‘urine on the floor… spots where there was feces on the floor… spots where your feet were just sticking. Like, if you stood at his bedside and when you went to walk away, your foot was literally stuck.’ According to the Canadian government, the assisted suicide law is about ‘prioritis[ing] the individual autonomy of Canadians’; one may wonder how much autonomy a disabled man lying in his own filth had in weighing death over life."
:doomjak:
The problem with euthanasia and assisted suicide is that for the most part, no one actually wants to die. Seriously, no one actually wants it, it's almost always just because the alternative is seen as even worse. Take a patient who is in extreme pain 24/7 and who just wants to end it all, and imagine that we discover an amazing breakthrough that will fix all of their pain and allow them to live in a healthy and normal life without any issues whatsoever. They would take that in an instant instead.
The thing with assisted suicide is that those breakthroughs don't happen (or at least not nearly enough) and for 99.9% of the people in such situations, we simply don't know how or if their problems could be fixed ever. It's reasonable that we shouldn't force them to stay alive in a world that has no solution to their problems.
But with poverty? Or family worries? Or all the things that people typically commit suicide over? That stuff is fixable, we can help those. Most of these issues are problems society can fix easily, we just refuse to. That's when assisted suicide turns from "sad but necessary" into genocide. Body autonomy is only about choice when that choice isn't being purposefully limited by a shitty society that refuses to help you out if you can't find a place to live or you think you're hurting your family.