People that are trying to stop MAID always seem to have the belief that it’s something you can just waltz into a clinic and order same day with zero oversight.
There’s a whole process involved that requires scheduling, assessment, and sign-off from a medical professional. It’s not trivial. Not only that, the patient can halt the process at any time. Having gone through it with both my parents, the alternative would’ve been much worse.
I agree that access to mental health care in the country is pretty abysmal, but it’s not so dire that we’re just offering no questions asked, prescription-free suicide.
It’s almost as if that old Puritan bullshit about pain and suffering leading to godliness is still around and causing serious problems.
If you got something incurable and terminal and which is only going to get abysmally worse, you should have the ability to go out on your own terms in a peaceful and well-structured manner.
It sure beats slitting your wrists in a tub, that’s for sure.
And for the record: my parents are planning on MAiD for their own EoL strategy. Because dementia and chronic pain are no laughing matter. It’s my duty of care to ensure everything goes off without a hitch, something that I deeply owe two fantastic parents. They walked with me for the first 20 or so of my own life, it behoves me to walk with them to the last of theirs. There is no higher honour I can give.
I don’t like MAID, but I don’t like the sort of illnesses that cause people to want MAID even worse. If a medical professional can look at somebody’s condition, mental or physical, and say “This person’s life is probably not going to get meaningfully better using the treatments we have currently available.” then I think it is inhumane to tell them they HAVE to live with it, “just in case”. It’s their life. They’re the one suffering the illness. Let them choose. MAID does, once a medical professional validates it is a real issue. If we disagree with a particular medical professional’s assessment, then let them face justice. But other than that specific situation, people have a right to decide what to do with their own lives, I think.
Not all mental illnesses are the same 🤔
Regardless or maybe even in spite of that, sweeping policy moves are still the go-to.
