Poor? Homeless? Have you considered dying?

Another US is a dystopian hellhole thread? Hell no, this is happening in Canada of all places.

Source: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canada-maid-assisted-suicide-homeless

It will come to the US, or at least some version of it I'm sure, but could we not go this direction? Could we maybe live in the good timeline for a minute and not have this become normalized?

Wait, didn't rightforge dredge this up awhile ago, and we debunked it?

Let me guess. Your solution involves other people's money.

Pithy on-liners do not "debunk" anything.

My solution involves assisted suicide for cunts, not folk down on their luck.

Take a ticket.

First off, this is the National Post, a rightwing rag that's little better than Fox News.

Second, the current rightwing position is that MAID is bad and needs to be opposed at all costs, with many a slippery slope argument thrown out along those lines. This is one of those slippery slope arguments.

Third, 20% of people polled supported MAID for any reason, or no reason at all. And if we're being ethical and taking emotion out of it, shouldn't everyone have the right to end their life on their own terms if that's what they want? I might not agree with it, but forcing someone to keep living when they don't want to seems like a bad idea. There's loads of murderers and violent criminals out there that attempted suicide before they harmed others. Why make people stick around against their will if they're just going to take it out on other people?

Fourth, MAID is something you request. It's not something that's forced upon people. It's like if you're saying saying you support legalizing cocaine, you're not demanding it be thrown into people's faces.

Kind of how the anti-LGBT arguments work.
If you don't torment LGBT people into the closet, and/or to death, you're going to be pelted with disembodied flying dicks.
Even though we've had 40+ years for this to happen, and nothing.
Trust me, it's going to happen aaaaany minute now....

I mean if someone wants to end it all, shouldn't they be able to? As long as it's not being forced on people and you have some sort of a breather period to reconsider (along with mental health services offered), which is what I believe we have, I don't really see the problem

This is pretty embarrassing though, our health care system is falling apart under Trudeau

Is "inability to receive medical treatment" something along the lines of the system failing to provide the necessary care, or more like those people that aren't allowed on organ transplant lists because they refuse to quit smoking?

Good question, I do not know but if I had to guess I'd say both

Better open your wallet. We're funding this with a percentage of your holdings... oh, you don't make enough and barely have any? Dude, keep those greenbacks and go enjoy life. It's expensive enough.

The first sentence of that "news" story is utter horseshit and mischaracterizes the survey.

Congrats on being duped.

I do have an issue with it, though. It's one thing if you request euthanasia because you have a terminal illness, I support such an informed, well planned, long term decision, but because you're poor? To me that signifies a grievous failure on the part of the system. At no time should it be acceptable to see people choose death because they can't afford to live, because unlike a terminal illness that can stump medical science, poverty is an economic crisis, one that is well within a society's realm of control. This also extends to the disabled, mentally and physically. Even if the individual believes this is the path they feel they must take, and I emphasize this because people say no one is forced to do this, but if you know anything about poverty, then you know people don't willingly choose to be poor, that this situation offers an out for the state, for the corporations that back it, and not for the person whose needs aren't being met because of a deeply flawed and systemic inequality, who will have accepted euthanasia because they couldn't afford a home, food to eat.

So no, that is not something I support, because a person can be coerced, they can be exploited, to use such a system to be less of a drain on the state apparatus, rather than because it's something they truly need.

No one's perfect.

The thing is, this has been discussed before as something that has been coming for a while, and is highly contentious among the more centrist, liberal, and leftist crowds, too:

https://www.leftvoice.org/death-by-...ng-program-exposes-fault-lines-in-healthcare/
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/maid-poverty-disability-1.6687453
https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c631558a457188d2bd2b5cfd360a867
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/most-...planned-maid-expansion-survey-finds-1.6271104
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/con...-of-abuse-is-becoming-ever-more-apparent.html
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/ad-am/bk-di.html
https://globalnews.ca/news/9176485/poverty-canadians-disabilities-medically-assisted-death/
https://disabilityalliancebc.org/go...for-maid-on-the-sole-basis-of-mental-illness/
https://www.csa-scs.ca/files/webapp...-assistance-in-dying-maid-to-disabled-people/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...cbfca4-7232-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html


So even if you think the National Post is misrepresenting things, the fact is that Canada is changing its laws to allow people to use MAID even if they're not experiencing terminal illness, and opening the gates to something far more dangerous that will be used to do more than just ease the suffering of those who have no other way out.

As far as I'm concerned, @14thDoctor pretty much said everything that needs to be said on this topic.

/thread

health care is provincially managed though, so blame your premiers... Ontario's has been going down hill since Harris.

Not to say that there's anything good about Trudeau other than he's not any of the five last leaders of the Cons, but...

Have you been peeking into @Bill Carson 's wet dreams again?

It's not feasible to observe events that occur in less than Planck time.

is that the one with the disembodied vaginas?

Made me look. Shudder.

Is it acceptable for someone to get an abortion because they can't afford to have a child? Would you see abortions requested for that reason restricted?

That's not true, and you know it. Some people willingly choose to be poor. Oh, maybe they don't outright say "I choose to be poor," but they willingly and knowingly make other choices that keep them poor. That can be for noble reasons, or for self-destructive reasons, or just because they're lazy. But some people absolutely do choose to be poor.

Again, this isn't something the Canadian government is proposing. This is a question that was asked by a private polling company.

But while we're on the subject, do you think people aren't already killing themselves every day? Be it through actual straightforward suicide, or indirectly with drugs and alcohol and violence and other self-destructive life choices? If anything, medically assisted suicide would make governments more accountable, because we'd finally have receipts for it.

Refusing to let grown adults do what they choose with their own bodies because you think they're being tricked sounds really familiar... where have I heard that argument before?

Yeah, that's how fear mongering works.

I think mental health MAID would actually act as a guard against people being bullied into suicide given that there's inevitably some screening/counselling.

It is acceptable for someone to have an abortion because they can't afford to raise a child.
It should not be acceptable to open up avenues for suicide because someone is too poor to live in the current system.

While both of those involve control over one's body, only the latter option takes into consideration the exploitation of the working class, the disabled, the marginalized.
As for "some people willingly choose to be poor," I disagree. That is a fundamental disagreement we have. I believe most people become accustomed to being poor, and try to make the best of it, but few people truly choose such a path.

Medically assisted suicide would not hold governments accountable, because (for example) more than 1,300,000 people in the US, alone, died of COVID, and the government still hasn't been held accountable over it. People are walking around without masks while a pandemic rages on, and it puts the disabled at risk. This is all rooted in systemic oppression, a system that values profit over human lives. It goes so far beyond just euthanasia, but this advocating of euthanasia as an outlet for the poor so they can at least escape the dread and misery of poverty is inexcusable, in my opinion, because it frees the government from its responsibility in exactly the way you claim they'll be held responsible: "doesn't that person have a right?"

Just like Republicans in the US frame poverty and means testing on people in dire need as "right to work" rather than being worked to death on subsistence wages. It's all in how you spin it. You make poverty look like a personal issue rather than a systemic one. You make human rights work more like privileges. You turn suicide, because you can't afford to eat as a solution because the alternative being given what you need to survive so you don't fall into depression and consider suicide the only out, to seem unreasonable or some kind of unworkable fantasy.

Disabled people, especially in the US, are seen as a drain on the public health, on the bottom line, and since Canada's also a capitalist nation, this plays into that narrative as well. A lot of people tend to think Canada is the US but more civilized, but in general I've found Canada can be just as bad if not worse when it comes to certain rights (especially indigenous rights).

Again, it all comes down to a fundamentally oppressive system, where an outlet for the terminally ill is now being used to allow people to choose death instead of poverty, and there is no reason for that to be acceptable.

To put it in terms like an old metaphor, why keep the child crushing machine and give people the option to die before it crushes them, rather than shutting down the child crushing machine? The system does not have to be this way, it is entirely controllable, it is entirely by design that it exists.

This isn't a force of nature, it's not an act of god, it is a solvable systemic issue, and allowing people to die so they don't have to suffer in it rather than giving them what they need to thrive should not be an acceptable solution.

I critically question the morality and ethics of such a system that offers this.

Who is going to handle it? From what I've read, a number of provinces in Canada have been complaining of underfunding in mental health care sectors.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0840470420933911

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-mental-health-federal-government-1.6761689

Sure you have.

Again, it's not actually happening, and no one in power is proposing it happen. You're falling for the same sort of slippery slope fearmongering that the right-wingers use to push back against minority rights.

Good thing the system doesn't offer it, then.

The provinces always complain about underfunding in every sector. That's like 90% of every premiers conference, crying about how poor the provinces are and begging for more cash from Ottawa.

And I don't know about hospitals in the US, but hospitals in Canada already have social workers in them helping patients connect to helpful supports.

Funded by the Feds though. And the provinces aren’t the ones refusing to change draconian and mind numbingly bad laws that basically prohibit foreign doctors from practising here. I’ve got a friend - who’s Canadian - and a surgeon living in Washington State who desperately wants to move back to Canada to practice but can’t because he can’t afford the time it would take to get re-accredited as per Canadian regulations. This guy went to Princeton and is one of the more respected guys in his field and we’re just letting him walk

Can’t wait for Pierre to lead this country :wink:

yup... and there's a hundred different therapy services available as preventatives at jsut as many entry points. I mean, they've even at least taught me the basics of IS PATH WARM at the drop in because I interact with that particular at risk sector... Part of the job is to be able to spot the prolonged demeanor changes, etc. and kick it over to an actual social worker... But that's kind of an aside here... we're talking the ultimate expression of personal autonomy for everyone and anyone, regardless.

So I'm also thinking of how many people don't off themselves simply because the last thread is knowing someone they care about will be the poor schmuck to find the bloated corpse. Attempting to get the "legal" option is again, going to fast track them to proper help/assessment. How many suicides do those left behind say shit like "If only I'd known/they'd said something...". MaiD kind of requires them to.


<edit to add link... learn this shit like you learn first aid and CPR>

Except they do, and it's in the articles I posted for you, many of them centrist, liberal, and left wing just to cover the bases.

From CBC.ca

CTV News.ca

Global News.ca

Left Voice.org

Associated Press

Canadian Sociological Association

The article below does a better job explaining what I'm saying, in that the issue goes beyond just MAID itself, but is systemic in how disabled people, and people in poverty (the two overlap) are treated in how they can be killed rather than what can be done to keep them alive if they had better options available:

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-medical-assistance-in-dying-disabled-thurley-1.6750796

Hence why I am saying that it's fine if a person has a terminal illness and has chosen to end their suffering via euthanasia, but the fact is that by widening the qualifications for MAID to include disabled people, and in doing so come across that overlap of people in poverty (not to mention how much of that disability is directly aggravated and deepened by poverty), instead of addressing the needs of these disabled people while they are alive, just treats the symptom and not the problem itself, and it does so by eliminating the symptom, which just so happens to be another human being.

You may have your reasons for finding that course of action preferable to just addressing their needs, I just don't share in them.

I'm kinda terrified of the notion. The guy has less real world experience than Harper.

Yeah, I'd scream it with you that our welfare and disability rates are a cruel joke. Compounded by the fact that in Ontario most have to live near or in a couple of the cities to get appropriate health care (although they do cover travel expenses).

The wealth gap even within the fully employed has driven the most basic costs out of reach... my ex's place is gettign demo'd for condos... not sure she's going to be able to stay in the city despite clearing $60K. I know if I ever lost this rent controlled place of mine, I'd be fucked.

We all deserve better than this shit. All of us.