"Why I don't regret my abortion"

And they shouldn't be expected to pay the price of everyone else's joy. Especially if nobody would be deprived of that joy in a universe with no sentient life.



You don't want to.



Because the fact that you believe in something unproven and unprovable in order to enrich your life may be evidence that bare reality isn't good enough for you. Which helps my argument, because it would be rather hypocritical of you if you're saying that life is good enough to be perpetuated.



Statistically, it would have been certain to be a bad year for most of the world's population. 

There are no provisions for "edge cases", except in a few countries such as The Netherlands and Belgium. The "edge cases" just have to be condemned to a lifetime of indignity and pain because of the retrograde unco guid such as yourself insist that it must be so. What is it that you think is being done to help those "edge cases" in places other than The Netherlands and Belgium?



They have the option to have their pathologies treated, and in the system that I've suggested, that would be part of the route towards having the option for assisted suicide. But you're ignoring my actual suggestion and implying that I'm advocating for just putting people to death at the first sign of adversity. And asking someone who is scared of being harmed to either violently harm themselves or to perpetually be harmed by everything else around them is abusive and sadistic. And why is the suffering of the "mentally incompetent" not important?



It's perfectly rational to wish to escape harm by putting oneself beyond the reach of any potential harm. Whether the harm comes from a personality disorder does not change the rationality of that; and you are denying reality if you won't admit to the existence of cases which have not responded to prolonged and aggressive courses of treatment. And given that the people in question never expressed any interest in "life" or any of the things that you value, why should they then be the ones imposed upon to inflict violent harm upon themselves in order to undo the harm that was brought upon them by others? If others are allowed to expose you to harm (in a way that is fully sanctioned and encouraged by the majority of people), why can other people not also be permitted to help you to place yourself beyond the reach of harm?



There are many people who were suicidal for decades before finally committing suicide, and it wasn't because they didn't quite have their minds made up about whether life was a miraculous gift or not. It's because intense instinctual fear of death is a successful genetic mutation. The humans who did not have the intense fear of death did not survive in great enough numbers to pass on their genes, because they stumbled haphazardly into danger. It has nothing to do with a rational calculation of whether there are more joys in life than there are despairs it is the most fundamental biological instinct that most animals have.



It is a terrible imposition given that the individual was placed in harms way by the unsolicited actions of others (with the unreserved sanction of the majority of other individuals in that society), and is now being forced to inflict physical pain and damage on themselves and accept the potential risks of the suicide attempt being unsuccessful.



Because just wanting something isn't sufficient to enable someone to overcome a biological instinct that has been the product of all the evolution that has occurred since life first appeared in the universe. And I don't know what goes on in the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic, but I've never read a single account of the condition that makes it seem like something that one would wish to live with. And if it would be immoral to inflict paranoid schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder on someone, then why is it acceptable to turn our backs and ignore the plight of those whose conditions have not responded to prolonged and aggressive treatment? If it happened to you, you would likely deem the views that you are now expressing to be as reprehensible and lacking in compassion as I now find them. Intense and prolonged suffering is fine as long as it's happening to anyone other than you?

You clearly don't know how treatment for mental illness works. It's not the same as treating cancer. You don't just ramp up the morphine levels up until the patient dies ('doctrine of double effect' is not relevant to psychiatry, or eventually get to a level of treatment that risks the death of the patient.

It should be understood that the patients are asking for death because they are suffering, and cessation of that suffering is a rational response, especially if it is a long term suffering that hasn't responded to previous attempts to ameliorate it. And it can be plainly seen that they are suffering very badly. The only reason that they aren't assisted to die is because of the cowardice and atavism of people who project their own primal fear of death from their lizard brain onto the patient's circumstances.



If there's a physical cause of the disease which cannot be remedied, then there is a physical problem which it is hopeless to solve. And "rationally choose" in your catch-22 means that the person requesting to die isn't allowed to be "sad" about their condition, because if they're "sad" then they're depressed, and if they're depressed they cannot make a rational decision. So the only people that would be eligible to receive the treatment would be those who would not request it.



They're choosing, and they're choosing because they are suffering severely. The condition entails grievous suffering, and obviously people who are suffering are apt to want an end to that suffering and more inclined to consider options that people suffering with a grievous mental illness are more apt to include more drastic measures than people suffering from only a hangnail. And whether or not they are physically capable of committing suicide; it is unjust that society can unreservedly sanction the creation of lives such as those and then if the owner of that life wishes to end it, be forced to undertake a gruesome, painful, undignified, solitary, covert and highly risky action. You haven't proven that there's anything unpleasant about being dead - no scientific surveys of dead people who all regret their decision; and no reason to suppose that you know what's best for those people regardless of what illnesses are impairing their functioning.



They don't currently have a right to die (instead, a legal obligation to stay alive). That's obviously what I want to change.




The ones who are "struggling with the idea" can vacillate as much as they want and choose to continue living at any point up until the administration of the medicine. But if they do decide to take the medication then that means that they have gone to their deaths in a dignified manner, having received respect rather than paternalistic tyranny from the medical industry, doing what they deem to be best for themselves. And legalising the right to die is not an effective means of depopulating the Earth. But if we're going to continue sanctioning the creation of new life (some of which will always be inevitably destined for a life of unremitting suffering), then there should be a humane way of dealing with those who wish to just feel that they aren't cut out for the risky and dangerous journey into which they were placed without their consent. Suicide would be one treatment of the many that are available, and the instinct to survive at all costs would still be the default setting for most people.




You're not interested in finding out about cases which have been futile and in which the patient has never conquered their suffering, even with the best help available from the medical establishment. A bit like how fiscal conservatives will ignore the high unemployment rate when advocating for scrapping or time-restricting all unemployment benefits; you will ignore any statistics which expose the callous lack of empathy which underpins your attitudes on this issue.



What suicidal people have you spoken to, who have advised you that following through on a decision to commit suicide is as easy as choosing which colour of socks to put on in the morning? There is scientific evidence that there are those who are capable of suicide (who exhibit an uncommon degree of fearlessness) and those who lack capability not through any physical or intellectual shortcoming, or lack of mental competency, but because they lack this fearlessness.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178114002637

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5022773/

Allowing people to access a safe, risk-free and painless method of suicide will help those who are certain that suicide is right for them, but lack the requisite fearlessness to inflict an act of violence against themselves. Of course, there will still be those who are inhibited by fear from even taking the medicine.



It's turning our backs on them if we know that there isn't a guaranteed solution to their problem which will preserve their life. And procreating all the whilst knowing that some of the lives which are produced are going to be sentenced to a lifetime of profound suffering is a terribly selfish decision; especially when we are not offering a safe and humane way out for those that find themselves to be amongst that unlucky number. It's not "overemotional" to spare a thought for the collateral damage which is caused by continuing procreation. Your refusal to consider the plights of those who are inconvenient to your thesis that life is always worth living is callous and is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian bioethics of sanctity of life.



By "life-preserving" I was referring to any treatments that are non-fatal. And ones which tend to have their own side effects, which can often be worse than the condition that they are designed to treat. Also if we're going to keep people unconscious so that they do not have to endure suffering (as far as I know this does not happen in psychiatric hospitals), then there's no value in keeping the patient alive.



I've dealt with this above. Even the most deranged patient is capable of killing themselves; but conversely the most sober-minded and rational individual may either fail in their attempt (potentially with catastrophic consequences), or never be able to marshal the requisite fearlessness to inflict violence against themselves (see studies linked above).