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Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified death?

Should the over 75 be allowed to choose a dignified death?

  • yes, people should allowed to do that

    Votes: 46 85.2%

  • no, people should not be allowed that

    Votes: 2 3.7%

  • are the Dutch democrats nutjobs or what?

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • big deal, who cares about the Dutch or their crazy liberal views

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • allowing euthanasia is bad enough but other countries should stop this

    Votes: 1 1.9%

  • it is a terrible idea but if the Dutch want this, that is their problem not ours

    Votes: 2 3.7%

  • other, ….... (please explain)

    Votes: 5 9.3%
  • Total voters
    54
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

phattonez said:
No. Further, why can you not take drugs such as OxyContin which would relieve most of that pain? End of life pain is manageable. It does not justify murder.
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And therein arises the issue of quality over quantity. What is the point of continuing to live, if you have to take so much pain melds that you live in a haze?
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

truthatallcost said:
I just think it's plain sad how little life is valued these days. Abortion of babies, euthanasia for the old, drone strikes for civilians in the Middle East...where is the supposed 'progress' of the last 50 years? I don't see it. The young, old, and sickly should be protected, not killed by society because they aren't wanted.
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Well in this case we don't have any killing by society. Death is by the person themself. So do try to keep the strawman out of it.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

soylentgreen said:
My avatar name would be my suggestion for avoiding funerals.
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Non-sequiter.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

phattonez said:
Why is assisting in suicide a punishable offense? Why was Dr. Kevorkian sentenced?
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We have allowed or disallowed many things in our past that we now see as a violation of right. Simply noting something as illegal is not an argument as to why it should or should not be illegal. That's called circular reasoning.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

maquiscat said:
Well in this case we don't have any killing by society. Death is by the person themself. So do try to keep the strawman out of it.
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Sure we do. Why would a senior citizen opt for suicide to begin with, unless they're terminally ill?

- A society that used to provide them with a pension, now tells them to 'work till you die'.
- A society that spends billions on foreign born people, while doling out meager & insufficient social security checks for Americans who've paid into the system their whole lives.
-A society that says 'work til you die', but we're going to allow your employer to lay you off so they can hire someone younger to take your job. Age discrimination in the workplace is the only accepted form of discrimination in the workplace.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

phattonez said:
If suicide is okay, then is anorexia okay? I mean, it's your body, right?
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You are ignoring the distinctions being put forth here, trying to make this a black and white issue, where there are only two possibilities. Anorexia is a specific eating disorder where the individual somehow sees themselves as being physically larger than they actually are. This would make it different from someone who is near starving themselves because they actuallly think the protruding rib look is sexy. The former has a distorted body image, the latter sees their body as it actually exist, and thus is not under a delusion. The first is in need of help, the latter is not.

The same principle is being discussed here when it comes to deciding whether or not to end one's own life. They is why the evaluations are required in the law provided and is usually a part of any proposal here as well.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

WCH said:
I wouldn't mind the option to off myself [like who's gonna stop me] but, I don't want to be eaten afterwards.
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You're done with the body. Why would you care? You're getting a new one later.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

longview said:
I was wondering how this would work with life insurance?
Could someone get a big term policy, and then legally take an exit?
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Probably not and I would support law that allows for insurance companies to not have to include planned death as a payout. The point of insurance is for when the unexpected occurs, not the expected,
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

phattonez said:
Actually they are. They've done nothing to deserve being killed.
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Given that the "deserves" value is a subjective one, that can be argued either way. Especially when there are people who have committed great wrongs against others and then find they cannot live with themselves afterwards, thus they kill themselves, not innocent.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

Cephus said:
I said off yourself. By definition, that doesn't include offing others.
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Trying for a wee bit of humor there. Whoosh, feel the breeze and it passes over you.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

Cephus said:
But that violates the terms of the thread, that people ought to be able to decide FOR THEMSELVES, what to do with their own bodies, so long as it doesn't harm anyone else or society. So that's already been addressed. And for the "sane and informed" decision, far too often that means "what I want you to do". Just watch one of these threads for a while, you'll get people who simply define anyone who wants to do something that the poster doesn't like as "insane". Happens all the time. You can't just declare your opponent to be out of their minds as a means of winning an argument.
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How is ensuring that a person is not coerced into killing themselves, preventing them from deciding for themselves. So are you saying you do not want an oversight that prevents me from killing you in such a manner that it looks like you did it?
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

phattonez said:
In the sense that they should not have been killed? Yes.
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So then by this everyone who has received the death penalty has been an innocent?

I'm not saying that we withhold painkillers. Opioids are quite effective with end of life pain. What's cruel is thinking killing a man is mercy.
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I find it quite cruel to force them to live in a drug haze, losing quality of life.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

DA60 said:
'mur·der
ˈmərdər/
noun
1.
the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.'

Google Definition

Actually, suicide cannot be murder since murder requires at least two people...a perpetrator and a separate victim.
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Convenient that you left out the second part of the Google definition:
mur·der
ˈmərdər/
noun
1.
the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.
"the stabbing murder of an off-Broadway producer"
synonyms: killing, homicide, assassination, liquidation, extermination, execution, slaughter, butchery, massacre;
verb
1.
kill (someone) unlawfully and with premeditation.
"somebody tried to murder Joe"
synonyms: kill, put to death, assassinate, execute, liquidate, eliminate, dispatch, butcher, slaughter, massacre, wipe out;
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Killing someone, which would include self. It I should illegal and more often than not, premeditated.

Miriam-Webster:
Definition of murder
1
: the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought was convicted of murder
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A person, which can include self. Especially does not mean always.

And yes, there are other dictionaries that include the part about one killing another. I would say that quite honestly, suicide would be self murder. Mind you I am not placing a moral value upon that, neither claiming it right nor wrong.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

truthatallcost said:
Sure we do. Why would a senior citizen opt for suicide to begin with, unless they're terminally ill?
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What does the individual's terminal illness have to do with whether or not they decide on their own whether they want to end it early or tough it out? Society is not making that decision for them.

- A society that used to provide them with a pension, now tells them to 'work till you die'.
- A society that spends billions on foreign born people, while doling out meager & insufficient social security checks for Americans who've paid into the system their whole lives.
-A society that says 'work til you die', but we're going to allow your employer to lay you off so they can hire someone younger to take your job. Age discrimination in the workplace is the only accepted form of discrimination in the workplace.
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These are red herrings and not pertinent to whether or not society is forcing these people to live or to die.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

RabidAlpaca said:
No, it was never the law, as you can't murder yourself. It's legally and morally impossible. You can make the argument that one shouldn't commit suicide, you can't make the argument that it's the same thing as murder. That's like saying raping someone else is the same as raping yourself.
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#BanMasturbation
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

soylentgreen said:
Wich basically tells me that unlike some here you have no clue what the word means.
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Which word? Soylent Green, or non-sequiter? Technically the former is two words, but you made it one as your ID.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

If we cant get our act together on end of life care absolutely.....The medical system is currently abominable on this a lot of the time., way too many stick around for way too long...suffering.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

maquiscat said:
What does the individual's terminal illness have to do with whether or not they decide on their own whether they want to end it early or tough it out? Society is not making that decision for them.
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Terminal illness effects every part of a person's quality of life. I'm not going to stand in the way of a terminal individual if they are suffering.


These are red herrings and not pertinent to whether or not society is forcing these people to live or to die.
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No they aren't. Society has changed in the last few decades. The obsession we put on youth has made it acceptable to discriminate against old people. And I'm not an old person saying that, it's just what I see from studying history. But now that elderly people are pushed aside, you'll gladly offer them government sponsored suicide. I fail to see the humanitarianism in that.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

maquiscat said:
How is ensuring that a person is not coerced into killing themselves, preventing them from deciding for themselves. So are you saying you do not want an oversight that prevents me from killing you in such a manner that it looks like you did it?
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That's not killing yourself, is it?
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

maquiscat said:
Convenient that you left out the second part of the Google definition:


Killing someone, which would include self. It I should illegal and more often than not, premeditated.

Miriam-Webster:

A person, which can include self. Especially does not mean always.

And yes, there are other dictionaries that include the part about one killing another. I would say that quite honestly, suicide would be self murder. Mind you I am not placing a moral value upon that, neither claiming it right nor wrong.
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This is the definition of murder from the FBI:

'U.S. Department of Justice
—Federal Bureau of Investigation Released September 2011
Murder
Definition
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program defines murder and nonnegligent manslaughter as the willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another.'

https://www.scribd.com/document/192012354/FBI-Murder-by-Definition

And that is that.

Murder and suicide are COMPLETELY different in the eyes of the law (and in most people's eyes...guaranteed).


Besides, the second you make suicide legal - you completely remove even your stretch of a definition.
 
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Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

Cephus said:
That's not killing yourself, is it?
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Maybe I am missing something, or you are failing to put out a pertinent point of your position, but you seem to be against the oversight that prevents the abuse of the system for legal suicide by others who would use it to cover for their murder.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

DA60 said:
Besides, the second you make suicide legal - you completely remove even your stretch of a definition.
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Never claimed otherwise. However if we look at the FBI definition of murder then we could easily classify all deaths by another via war. That's not even listed under the justifiable section of your link. Of course the one problem is that these are what they score as murder for their statistics, not what is legally so or not, which makes it logical to separate out suicide from others.
 
Re: Should 75 year old (or older) people be allowed to choose their own dignified dea

truthatallcost said:
Terminal illness effects every part of a person's quality of life. I'm not going to stand in the way of a terminal individual if they are suffering.

No they aren't. Society has changed in the last few decades. The obsession we put on youth has made it acceptable to discriminate against old people. And I'm not an old person saying that, it's just what I see from studying history. But now that elderly people are pushed aside, you'll gladly offer them government sponsored suicide. I fail to see the humanitarianism in that.
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This is where we started:

truthatallcost said:
The young, old, and sickly should be protected, not killed by society because they aren't wanted.
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We are discussing an issue not where society is killing a person, but where the person is choosing for themselves whether or not to die. Unless you want to go metaphysical and start talking about everything being interconnected or something. Issues about pensions and whatnot are red herrings to the issue of whether or not a person should be able to choose to self terminate.
 
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