I keep seeing this massive submarine bioconservative pushback against assisted dying in Canada, even internationally. Given the magnitude and popularity of it, it seems inevitable that itâll succeed and itâll go back to being banned or alomost entirely inaccessible. If youâre on the left the most common argument youâve likely seen against this is that disabled people are being offered death instead of medical support or personal caregivers, and oh isnât that basically a Nazi thing or whatever, so just to clarify for people who arenât Canadian, this program did not replace better support for disabled people. And if we get rid of it, of course it wonât be replaced by better support for disabled people. One doesnât need to look very far away, or far into the past, to see just how badly people with severe disabilities get treated in societies where they also donât have access to assisted dying!
Most of the arguments you see about how this is a Big Social Problem just boil down to âa health provider broached the topic with me and I was offended,â which I hope I donât need to say isnât a good reason to change who has access to it. But there is an argument there for changing the process by which itâs handled: namely, I think people are right to be worried that some people might get pressured into it by health providers, because we already see problems of that type in the existing system: poor people getting conned into having a hysterectomy because someone decides theyâre having too many babies, and so forth. But the best approach there is probably just to have a rule that it canât be raised individually by health workers unless the patient raises it first, and that general information about it (e.g. pamphlets, website information, PSAs) are widely available and publicized so that people know itâs an option. That would make sense as a targeted intervention designed to head off the worst concerns! But of course weâre not going to get that, because the pushback isnât substantively driven by concerns of that type, itâs driven by bioconservatives who feel that suicide is inherently wrong and arenât being honest about it.
Anyway, keep an eye on it. The media push has been sufficiently organized that I expect it will continue until the law is repealed.
@institutbenjamenta replied:
how can you trust doctors to be mindful enough to not just suggest suicide as an alternative to putting effort into a âdifficultâ patientâs case?
Tumblr wonât let me @ you for whatever reason, but youâre not the only one to say this, so I suppose it functions as a generalized response.
I actually addressed this specific objection in my original post â there are straightforward ways to avoid this scenario while protecting the right to die, and people who argue for banning or narrowing assisted dying in lieu of those approaches are doing so because they donât care about that right, which is a stance I can understand but canât agree with.
That said, even without adopting those added precautions, I think the degree to which banning assisted dying would help with this problem is pretty narrow. Like, if weâre talking about doctors pressuring people, a) thatâs already forbidden, and b) insofar as it happens anyway, itâs a far more prevalent issue with other sorts of irreversible medical procedures. And if theyâre not pressuring people they can just say no, and in fact thatâs been what happened in pretty much every case Iâve heard cited with alarm.
But okay, letâs say we ban assisted dying on those grounds, or restrict it to only people who are âallowedâ to want to die by the most narrowly restrictive norms we can devise. What is going to happen when they go to see this hypothetical bad doctor who suggests suicide because proper treatment sounds like a drag? This isnât some kind of cheat code to get good care out of bad doctors; theyâre still going to neglect the patient and refuse to mention the procedures they donât want to do, but maybe theyâll prescribe some Tylenol or something. A doctor like that is a serious problem in itself; you arenât doing much to protect their patients if your solution is âmake sure they canât recommend assisted dying.â
I can really only reiterate the point I made above, which is that all these issues are issues with irreversible medical interventions in general, and by all accounts the problems with medical malpractice when it comes to other procedures are much more severe than with assisted dying, so people who are more eager for wide-ranging bans for this procedure than for others in that class are generally expressing an antipathy toward assisted dying in principle. (There are people who would apply the same standard to this as to my earlier example of hysterectomies, and various other things like that, but thatâs a very deeply bioconservative stance, which is what I was saying.)
What an absolute nut bar response you've given but here we go.
"Like, if we're talking about doctors pressuring people, a) that's already forbidden"
As forbidden as any other crime. Wait, crime still happens? And criminals go unpunished? Well then, surely a doctor will not commit the forbidden act of pressuring an unwell patient into MAiD in the privacy of a doctor's office, right? You said:
"But the best approach there is probably just to have a rule that it canât be raised individually by health workers unless the patient raises it first"
But what stops them? Are you willing to weigh the chances that all patients who are proposed MAiD without suggesting it first themselves will not accept MAiD and will immediately report the practitioner? Is it safe to assume that if a patient suggests MAiD, that their doctor will not leap at the chance to absolve themselves of a potentially difficult patient?
"And if they're not pressuring people they can just say no"
Picture this: a patient that has a debilitating but treatable condition. This naturally affects their mental well-being. Do you think that when the treatment offered is death, that someone in that condition will be sound of mind to say no? Do you believe that when the treatment is harder to acquire than death, that the patient will say no? Do you understand the difficulty of living with a condition that incapacitates and how that may impair a patient's ability to persevere when offered death, knowing the alternative is to continue suffering with waning hope that they will be treated and live? This is victim blaming.
The responsibility is on the doctor to not spread shot MAiD to patients, not on patients to say no.
"This isn't some kind of cheat code to get good care out of bad doctors; they're still going to neglect the patient and refuse to mention the procedures they don't want to do, but maybe they'll prescribe some Tylenol or something."
A patient neglected but alive can find another doctor and report their current doctor for failing to provide sufficient treatment. A patient who accepts the proposal of MAiD in the face of prolonged hardship is dead and the doctor will move on to their next victim.
"A doctor like that is a serious problem in itself; you aren't doing much to protect their patients if your solution is "make sure they can't recommend assisted dying.""
You are protecting their right to receive treatment that helps them continue to live. You are killing off your witnesses of a bad practitioner if you think that being offered MAiD is comparable to being prescribed hardly sufficient pain medication.
"which is that all these issues are issues with irreversible medical interventions in general, and by all accounts the problems with medical malpractice when it comes to other procedures are much more severe than with assisted dying"
I genuinely cannot fathom how anyone could say this. You got me. I am unsure how to explain the difference between unnecessary, irreversible medical interventions that leave the patient alive, and medical interventions where the sole intent is to kill patients. I would believe the severity between the two is plain to see.
