Who here has argued that those people's beliefs/wishes should ever be ignored? — ChrisH

Ah, Chris.

Maybe it's not just about not ignoring folk, but actually listening and thinking about what they have to say. I urge you to have another red of the article and give it a bit more consideration. It's not a philosophical paper, so you might have to put some effort into seeing the argument. I assure you it is there and at the least worthy of consideration.

Who here has argued that those people's beliefs/wishes should ever be ignored? — ChrisH

I did give consideration to the opinions presented in the article, I just found those opinions utterly unpersuasive. — ChrisH

Just to be clear I didn't use the word "ignore" you did. I simply asked you to provide me with one name, of someone more qualified to speak about the perspective of the importance of living life with dignity than Stella and you failed to provide one.

I simply asked you to provide me with one name, of someone more qualified to speak about the perspective of the importance of living life with dignity than Stella and you failed to provide one. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

In my view no one is qualified to speak on behalf of anyone else on this particular subject.

It is, I hope, easy to see that the OP is badly flawed. In suggesting that poor people should have the right to kill themselves it seeks to solve issues of inequity by not addressing them. It argues for replacing a dignified life with a dignified death.

I trust you, whoever is reading this, find that idea repugnant.

Those who live with disabilities are obliged to fight for their dignity perpetually. Is it so hard to see why they object to having the option of a "dignified death" forced on them by the able?

If the argument in the OP is repugnant, then so is any argument for allowing folk with disabilities to die with dignity while withholding from them the means to live with dignity.

In my view no one is qualified to speak on behalf of anyone else on this particular subject. — ChrisH

Very convenient. You will not have to listen to the voiceless.

Maybe it's not just about not ignoring folk, but actually listening and thinking about what they have to say. — Banno

Who is making the argument that anyone (or any group of people) should not be listened to?

In my view no one is qualified to speak on behalf of anyone else on this particular subject. — ChrisH

Are you familiar with the poem written by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984). It is about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group. There are many versions of this poem but best I can tell this is the original and will answer the question

"Who is making the argument that anyone (or any group of people) should not be listened to?"

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

It isn't about being listened to or not but rather the collective voice we could all have if we had the wisdom of going through something we might never have to. In other words, let us listen to the perspective of someone in Stella's position and make life with dignity something to strive for, regardless of it's direct impact on us as individuals.

Like Banno I am an advocate for Euthanasia.

Who is making the argument that anyone (or any group of people) should not be listened to? — ChrisH

You gave that impression with your ill-considered reply to my post about Stella.

It struck a nerve with me, obviously. I am a white, middle-aged, middle-class male who came to realise that I wasn't listening.

Privilege is invisible to the privileged.

It isn't about being listened to or not... — ArguingWAristotleTiff

In other words, let us listen to the perspective of someone in Stella's position.... — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I'm finding your arguments confusing.

I say again, who has suggested that Stella Young should not be listened to?

I'm finding your arguments confusing.

I say again, who has suggested that Stella Young should not be listened to? — ChrisH

You suggested that no one can speak for another on this issue and I ask you, if not Stella than who?

You gave that impression (that anyone should not be listened to) — Banno

I've reread everything I posted in this thread and am at a complete loss as to how you could leap to such an uncharitable interpretation.

You suggested that no one can speak for another on this issue and I ask you, if not Stella than who? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Your question makes no sense.

I've reread everything I posted in this thread and am at a complete loss as to how you could leap to such an uncharitable interpretation. — ChrisH

To which I ask: How you could leap to such an uncharitable interpretation of Stella's writing?

Strange. I had completely the opposite reaction to the Stella Young article. — ChrisH

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/138421

Was it I who was uncharitable?

And what about when someone is not able to top themselves, and asks for help? Should assisting a suicide be legal?

Many people strive to maintain their health, from young adulthood to old age. Then, fit as a fiddle and 90 years old, they develop the inevitable chronic illness, and they can't die as quickly as they would like.

One thing people can do to insure a swifter death and avoid the need for assisted or unassisted sucice is to stop obsessive health-oriented practices. If you want to die quickly, then

smoke heavily, and if you live in your own house alone, smoke in bed
drink as much as you can
use lots of recreational drugs
eat as much of whatever you like
don't exercise
don't see a doctor about the odd lump, sore, numbness, malfunction, etc.
don't use seat belts
disable the airbags in your car
text, talk, and game while driving at excessively fast speeds
encourage any suicidal thoughts you might have
engage all dangers that you find
pretend that you are Superman whom nothing can harm

With any luck, you will be in such bad shape that when you do get sick (much sooner rather than later) you will be a corpse in no time at all.

That's my life plan.

Basically you're right.

Certainly, if someone has a disability (old or new, resulting from injury, disease, old-age, or any other cause) that that person feels unacceptably reduces hir (his/her) quality of life, then s/he should have state-supported medical assistance for humane "suicide". (...but, under those conditions, I don't call it "suicide". I call it medically-justified auto-euthanasia.)

Where I disagree with you is when you require the applicant to be of sound mind. If someone has any disability (as outlined above) that anyone could call unacceptable, then the applicant shouldn't have to be of sound mind. Anyway, a serious injury or disease or other condition that spoils your quality of life could very likely also affect your soundness of mind...physically or emotionally. How sound of mind would you be if something really bad happened to you?

As for people without a disability, that's more difficult.

Ideally, they don't need auto-euthanasia. Yes, they didn't choose this life. Didn't even choose life...or did they? I claim that we're in a life because we're someone, prior-ly a hypothetical person, who is predisposed for life, wants or needs life, or is involved with it in some way.

In any case, you're certainly involved in life now. You're not done till you're done. Some suggest, and i agree, that life-completion can require many lives.

Therefore, you're here for a reason. The fact that you're here indicates that you aren't done.

Ideally, there would be counseling and all kinds of help for people who think they don't want to live.

But we don't live in an ideally-run world--not even close.

And, in a world such as this one, I claim that anyone less fortunate has a right to assisted suicide upon demand, even without any disability, just because of their disadvantaged station in this world.

You can't treat people the way that they're sometimes treated in this world, and simultaneously tell them that they don't have a right to assisted auto-euthanasia.

So, in our world, anyone, without exception, should be able to get assistance for auto-euthanasia.

That's just an obvious moral fact.

But, I still emphasize that, unless there's an intolerable disability (and only the person hirself should be the judge of that intolerability), auto-euthanasia would be a big mistake, even in our world. ...for the reasons i expressed earlier in this post. ...because we're in a life for a reason, and we're obviously not done.

It's just that it's necessary to emphasize a distinction between the rightness and advisability of auto-euthanasia, and the moral right (under our societal conditions) to it, even if it's a big mistake. The moral right is there, even when auto-euthanasia is highly inadvisable.

No one should do auto-euthanasia without an intolerable disability, even in our monstrous world.

Without the justification of an unacceptable disability, auto-euthanasia is suicide, and suicide is a big mistake.

Obviously, as I too said, people, including disabled people, should have a fair and equal chance in life. Justice, equality, fairness,.opportunity. But, even with those things some people find their disability unacceptable or even intolerable.

Stella Young certainly has the right to make her own choices and preferences. ...as does each person, each disabled person in particular, even if they don't agree with her,and if their wishes aren't the same as hers. Therefore I don't think one person has a right to decide what options should be available to someone else.

In my previous post here, I certainly didn't mean to imply that auto-euthanasia would be the right choice for disabled people. That's their choice, their decision. All I meant was that, if someone feels and insists that their disability is intolerable, or even unacceptable, for them, in their opinion, and if they request assistance for auto-euthanasia, then they have a right to it.

And I'm not primarily saying that for other people. I'm saying it because making one's own decisions is a basic right, and everyone, including me, should have that right. ...in all individual matters, including the matter of if and when to choose assisted auto-euthanasia.
.

But here's the guts of it:

Before we can talk about death with dignity, we need to ensure that all people, regardless of age or disability, can live with dignity. — Banno

Which is just saying that we can never talk about it, because that's a utopian goal that can never be achieved. It reminds me of Bob Hawke's 'No child will be living in poverty' statement back in the eighties. Hawke did some great things and, arguably, poverty receded significantly under his govt, but the goal was certainly not achieved. If we followed Stella's request, the issue would be permanently barred from discussion. Of course we can, and should, deal with both issues at the same time.

In any case, it's a request, not an argument.

So far as I can see, nobody has responded to my point that Stella lived with autonomy and so is not in a position to speak about those that have permanently lost their autonomy. She is an excellent position to speak for the disabled, and she did a marvellous job of that. But that gives her no special role to speak for those with permanent loss of autonomy, as she was not one of them.

I find her conflation of disability with loss of autonomy misguided and unhelpful.

You suggested that no one can speak for another on this issue and I ask you, if not Stella than who?

Annie Gabrielides

There are people who are terminally ill but who remain mentally acute. The last stage of life (between the diagnosis of hopeless disease and death) can last several months, or in some case, a few years. Ask them what they want as they lay dying.

What many terminally ill people want, apparently (and quite reasonably) is assurance that they will be given relief from pain (opiates et al), sensitive and responsive care, whether they are at home, in a hospital, or in a hospice, and regular contact with their friends and families.

Myself? I probably would not opt for suicide, as long as there was good pain control, good care, and I wasn't forgotten. But, it might happen that when I die, my friends and family will have also died, and there will be few visits. Isolation alone would make suicide a much more attractive option. Lots of care facilities do not provide that one thing they are there to do -- provide sensitive and responsive care. And even pain relief isn't always adequate. Those last two deficiencies would also make an assisted death more attractive.

I have heard that a carefully phrased request (at the right time and in the right place) may prompt one's doctor to prescribe drugs for a terminal condition which IF TAKEN ABOVE THE PRESCRIBED DOSE will result in a quite speedy death.

To which I ask: How you could leap to such an uncharitable interpretation of Stella's writing? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I haven't made any interpretation. I've simply said that I find her arguments unpersuasive (not compelling).

Was it I who was uncharitable? — Banno

All I've done is say that I found the Stella Young article totally unpersuasive.

LikeTiff you seem to take the position that any disagreement with Stella Young is uncharitable.

She is an excellent position to speak for the disabled... — andrewk

I think you'll find many disabled people who don't agree with her.

Her voice should be heard but it should not be taken as the voice of all disabled people.

Andrew, in my opinion, Annie G absolutely has the ability to speak about assisted suicide and her reasons are as compelling as I have ever read. Just like Stella, I hope Annie's wishes are respected. Stella made a difference in the way people think about living with a disability, rather than what others considered a fair option of assisted suicide.
Stella wrote a letter to 80 yr old Stella which explains why having the dignity of living with a disability is so important, more important than dying with dignity. Maybe this will explain my perspective better.

"Dear eighty-year-old me,

Eighty, hey? Eighty.

Eighty is a long way from where I write to you now. Fifty years, in fact.

To be honest, I've never thought a great deal about you, eighty-year-old Stell. I tend not to think about living to some grand old age. Then again, I don't think about dying either. I suppose you do; you're eighty. You've done a lot of things. Seen a lot of things. You almost certainly have a hover-chair by now. When I was seven and watched an episode of Beyond 2000 that featured a floating armchair, I thought we'd definitely have one of those by fifteen, at the latest. As we both now know, the twenty-first century has been nothing if not a tremendous lie.

I suppose I can't really write this letter to you without talking about the assumption, the expectation, that people like us die young.

One of my most beloved crip heroes, Harriet McBryde Johnson, wrote in her memoir about her realization at four years old, while watching a Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, that she was a little girl who was going to die young. The telethon was famous for its host, Jerry Lewis, trotting out adorable disabled children and telling us all that they were going to die. Most disability charity hinges on that notion – that you need to send your money in quick before all these poor, pitiful people die. Peddling pity brings in the bucks, yo.

When it comes time for Harriet to start kindergarten and she isn't dead yet, she says to herself, 'Well, I might as well die a kindergartener.' When she starts high school and she isn't dead yet, she thinks, 'Well, I might as well die educated.' When she graduates from law school and she still isn't dead yet, at twenty-seven, she decides, 'Well, I might as well die a lawyer.' Harriet is thirty before she realises that it is, in fact, too late to die young. And so she spends the rest of her life protesting against that awful Muscular Dystrophy Telethon. Not just because it handed her a false death sentence, but because pity gets in the way of our rights. There's been much talk of Lewis bringing his telethon to Australia, but don't worry, eighty-year-old Stell, you totally kicked that one in the dick.

I fall into this trap of talking about Harriet as though she was a friend. She was, in a way. Hers was one of your 'coming out' books. Remember those days back before you came out as a disabled woman? You used to spend a lot of energy on 'passing'. Pretending you were just like everyone else, that you didn't need any 'special treatment', that your life experience didn't mean anything in particular. It certainly didn't make you different from other people. Difference, as you knew it then, was a terrible thing. I used to think of myself in terms of who I'd be if I didn't have this pesky old disability.

Then, at seventeen, something shifted. To borrow from Janis Ian, I learned the truth at seventeen.

That I was not wrong for the world I live in. The world I live in was not yet right for me.

I started learning about the social model of disability. Reading all the disability studies resources I could lay my hands on. I devoured the memoirs of other disabled people. And I completely changed the way I thought about myself.

I stopped unconsciously apologizing for taking up space. I'm sure you can scarcely imagine that now; a world where disabled people, women in particular, are made to feel like we're not really entitled to inhabit public spaces.

I started changing my language. To jog your memory, back when you're still thirty there are all kinds of fights about whether we are allowed to say 'disabled people' at all. It's 'people with disabilities' that's all the rage. 'Cause we're, like, people first, you know? And if we don't say that we're people, folks might get confused. But I've never had to say that I'm a person who's a woman, or a person who is Australian, or a person who knits. Somehow, we're supposed to buy this notion that if we use the term disabled too much, it might strip us of our personhood. But that shame that has become attached to the notion of disability, it's not your shame. It took a while to learn that, so I hope that you've never forgotten.

I started calling myself a disabled woman, and a crip. A good thirteen years after seventeen-year-old me started saying crip, it still horrifies people. I do it because it's a word that makes me feel strong and powerful. It's a word other activists have used before me, and I use it to honor them.

Unlike Harriet, I've never thought I was going to die young. But I'm aware, sometimes painfully so, that there are people who do. At thirty, there are already people quick to tell me I've had a good innings. Most recently, an anesthetic nurse who was about to knock me out before a very minor procedure on my right elbow asked me how old I was. I told her, and she looked down at me in my funny little hairnet in a bed you could have laid three of me end-to-end on, and she said, 'Oh, well, you're doing very well then, aren't you.'

'Am I? AM I?' I wanted to ask, but I was already drifting off to sleep. Some people are such c---s.

Still, what she'd said did alarm me a little, so I asked a doctor. Two, in fact. Apparently, people with this dicky bone thing usually have small lungs and so we're a wee bit more prone to nasty colds turning really nasty. But that's about the extent of it. At this point, there aren't a lot of old people with this thing around, but it's hardly surprising. From where I sit, it wasn't so long ago we stopped institutionalizing disabled people, locking them away in places that killed their souls and then their bodies. To think of how far we've come in my first thirty years makes me pretty bloody excited about the next fifty.

So you know what you're going to do? You're going to rug up in winter, eat your vegies, slap on some Vicks VapoRub and get the f--- on with it.

I will do everything I can to meet you, eighty-year-old Stell.

By the time I get to you, I will have loved with every tiny little bit of my heart and soul. Right now at thirty, there's a significant love in your life. He's lovely. He makes his old Lego into jewellery for you. He makes you a coffee every single morning, and he doesn't expect you to be civil before you've consumed it. If he accidentally buys the biggest carton of milk that's too heavy for you to lift, he pours it into smaller bottles so you can manage. Whether there's one great love or many, you will have loved and been loved, obscenely well.

By the time I get to you, you won't be a grandmother. Kids are cute, but f--- they're hard work. You decided many years ago, despite every man and his dog sending you those articles from New Idea and Woman's Day about 'The World's Smallest Mother' or 'My Miracle Pregnancy' that, in fact, you don't want your own kids. Even though we both know how much you like to do the opposite of what people expect of you, and the personal is political and all that, kids are too important for that. You're not very committed to the parenting bit, and you hear that's a pretty big part of the deal.

By the time I get to you, I will have lost people I love. At thirty, you've never lost someone dear to you to death. There was great-nana Stella, but she was very old and you were still so little. There was Ruby, the dog you didn't even know you actually loved until she was gone. You've come very close to losing your best friend, but she stayed and you get to keep loving her and texting during TV shows that wouldn't be the same without her. Losing someone is the thing that terrifies you more than anything. You will have been through that terror, and survived.

By the time I get to you, I'll probably have lost Mum and Dad. Dear Mum and Dad, who never wanted me to be anything other than what I am. Who never expressed a scrap of disappointment that I wasn't quite what they were told to expect. Who, despite being told not to have any more children because of the risk they'd have my condition, went on to have my two beautiful sisters. I think that's the thing I love them for the most; that they didn't see disaster, when those around them could speak of little else.

By the time I get to you, I'll have written things that change the way people think about disability. I'll have been part of a strong, beautiful, proud movement of disabled people in Australia. I'll have said and written things that pissed people off, disabled and non-disabled people. You will never, ever stop challenging the things you think are unfair.

You will write some fiction, in which the central character is a disabled teenage girl. Because f--- knows that wasn't around when you were growing up and desperately searching for characters you could truly relate to. Somebody might, at some point, call you the crip incarnation of Judy Blume. Who knows?

By the time I get to you, I'll be so proud. The late Laura Hershey once wrote about disability pride, and how hard it is to achieve in a world that teaches us shame. She said, 'You get proud by practicing'. Thanks to my family, my friends, my crip comrades and my community, I'm already really proud. But I promise to keep practicing, every day.

Listen, Stell. I can't tell you for certain that you and I will ever meet. Perhaps that thing I always say flippantly, usually with a third glass of wine in my hand – that I'm here for a good time not a long time – perhaps that's true.

But on my path to reach you, I promise to grab every opportunity with both hands, to say yes as often as I can, to take risks, to scare myself stupid, and to have a shitload of fun.

See you in our hover-chair, lady.

Love, Stell x

Stella wrote a letter to 80 yr old Stella which explains why having the dignity of living with a disability is so important, more important than dying with dignity. Maybe this will explain my perspective better. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Just because she wants to live doesn't meant others do too.

Those last two deficiencies would also make an assisted death more attractive. — Bitter Crank

I think the best case is freedom.

You should have the freedom to commit suicide if you want to.

The reason why a proposal for State-assisted suicide is frowned upon is, in part, because people find the idea naturally repulsive and/or have religious or values-based objections. That is the same reason why people were against gay marriage, until there was enough social advocacy that it became a popular idea, at least in Australia and the United States.

I think the best case is freedom.

You should have the freedom to commit suicide if you want to. — RepThatMerch22

And really, you do have the freedom to commit suicide if you so wish. Get a gun, learn how suicide by gun is best carried out, and then pull the trigger. Or get a rope, or use some other method.

A very large problem arises when one wishes to commit suicide but is no longer mobile enough to carry out certain steps--like obtaining a gun. As far as I know, Amazon doesn't sell guns and ammunition by express delivery. A friend of mine maintained for decades that she would commit suicide rather than suffer debilitating disease. Well, when debilitating disease finally happened and it became very difficult for her to move about, her options were slowly lost. Had she still been mobile, she could have arranged to jump out of her 18th floor window, but once she became immobile, that was no longer possible. (We discussed other means, but in the end she decided to let a cancer run its course without treatment, which was a slower but effective method.)

This thread is about state-assisted suicide, which is another kettle of fish altogether. Once one wishes to invoke state permission, assistance (or connivance) the issue of freedom is down the drain.

Which is just saying that we can never talk about it, because that's a utopian goal that can never be achieved. — andrewk

Is your counter here that we can never achieve an ideal therefore we can never talk about making things better?

But you would not suggest anything so obviously muddled.

If we followed Stella's request, the issue would be permanently barred from discussion. — andrewk

Is your argument here that if we were to take the thoughts of the disabled into account, they would scarper all discussion?

But you would not suggest anything so obviously biased.

nobody has responded to my point that Stella lived with autonomy and so is not in a position to speak about those that have permanently lost their autonomy. — andrewk

Is your suggestion here that she is not disabled enough for you to pay attention to?

But you would not suggest anything so disgusting.

I find her conflation of disability with loss of autonomy misguided and unhelpful. — andrewk

Loss of autonomy... a telling phrase. Those with disability suffer the removal of their autonomy as a matter of course, with such simple things as a step limiting their access to the world. The removal of autonomy is at the core of crip politics. As Stella says, this is inflicted most prominently in the attitude of medical staff.

I've spoken with folk who have woken from surgery to find someone had placed "do not resuscitate" on their bedhead without their consent.