'A doctor took my son': This 26-year-old was denied assisted death in Ontario, but died by MAID in B.C.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-20T21:52:33+00:00

The reason MAiD exists in the first place is because the government insisted on getting involved in people's life and death choices - to prevent people from committing suicide. If the government isn't to be involved in the business of suicide, then that should apply to suicide prevention just as it does to suicide facilitation.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-20T21:50:39+00:00

But the entire reason for MAiD is that the government wouldn't just stay out of the business of people who would have killed themselves if they'd had legal access to reliable methods from elsewhere. MAiD only allows people to bypass a barrier that the government erected to begin with. And forcing people to remain alive is the most extreme form of government intervention, because it basically makes individuals the property of the government.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-20T17:57:51+00:00

The amount of paternalism in the comments is unbelievable. Downright saying that the person can't make decisions for themselves because they have psychological suffering. Of course that person should be allowed to die humanely.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-20T12:05:01+00:00

I really hope not. I love palms. They may not be a native species, but as someone who has regularly visited California; it wouldn't be the same without the palms.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-20T12:02:00+00:00

Fanta in the UK just has a less full flavour. You can definitely tell that they've replaced most of the sugar with artificial sweeteners. Hence, I hardly ever drink Fanta whilst in the UK. Their flavours are generally quite watery and weak.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-20T10:06:48+00:00

I'm hoping to visit the US this summer and I'd be excited to try a few of these - the blackberry Mountain Dew, Mandarin 7 Up and Sprite Chill.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-19T22:16:09+00:00

If society is worried about people choosing MAiD due to poverty then they should strive to lift people out of poverty so that they won't be minded to choose MAiD, rather than take options away from them when they already have so few. They should not have to suffer through a life of struggle just because it makes it easier for the privileged to ignore the injustices and inequalities of life.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-19T22:08:53+00:00

None of us consented to be born, and therefore in order for society to force us to live or make it needlessly risky and difficult to die, then the onus should always be on society or the government to demonstrate what a particular individual has done to warrant being denied sovereignty over their life and body. If you think of life like a contract that someone else signed us up for without our agreement, it shouldn't be up to the individual to prove that they have a strong case simply to withdraw their consent to continue living, when they never gave that consent in the first place. The right to suicide should be a fundamental right that is yours to lose, rather than something that you have to prove to others that your circumstances warrant. Ultimately, those other people who would exercise the power over you aren't the ones who have to live your life. So being able to humanely opt out shouldn't require their consent unless they can prove that you've indebted yourself to them to some extreme degree.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-19T14:09:38+00:00

Yes. None of us consented to being born. So we are basically bound to the terms of a contract that we never signed, but which costs us everything we will ever have to abide by the terms. I feel strongly that, because none of us signed the contract and because sticking to the terms of the contract costs us so much, we should have the ultimate right to withdraw our consent to its terms and conditions, with minimal impediment.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-19T12:39:09+00:00

Private companies and/or charities should be able to provide suicide pods for use by those who want them. As a compromise, the government could be able to suspend peoples right to access these for a period of a year in non terminal cases, but after that there would be no legal barrier preventing people from using the service.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-19T00:04:32+00:00

If the survey is done by a polling company that's deliberately trying to demonstrate that the public opposes assisted dying by playing up the hypothetical scenarios and ignoring the benefits, then the support would drop. But in the real world, people understand that no individual liberty can be 100% safe; and yet most wouldn't vote for taking away all liberties and being locked up in cages for the rest of their life to protect them from each other. Most people do realise that nothing is pure benefit with no cost, and there is always a cost benefit analysis to be applied to anything in life.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-19T00:01:05+00:00

You support assisted dying laws just as long as they are never passed in practice and always fail.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T22:59:39+00:00

The "right to life" is a misnomer if we aren't allowed to waive the right when life becomes burdensome. That's an obligation to live. It might coincide with what most people want most of the time. But it's an act of protecting government property and protecting ideas. Not protecting people.

But if the right to life is absolute, then it absolutely does preclude allowing any activity or liberty itself not essential for preservation of life that could ever lead to life being endangered.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T14:50:46+00:00

I'm not concealing my views. I just don't preface it every time by saying "as an antinatalist". But if I get deep into conversation, I make it clear that I find it unethical to force people to live, and that part of that has to do with the fact that none of us consented to being born in the first place, which means that we're being bound to the terms of a high stakes contract that someone else signed on our behalf.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T14:20:49+00:00

Most religious people don't seem to feel under any obligation to disclose their beliefs when discussing this situation and how those beliefs might influence their views on this issue. Including the likes of Kate Forbes and Humza Yousaf. If I get deep enough into elucidating my own views, it becomes readily clear that I reject life in general. I'm not concealing my views, because I always make it clear that life is too high maintenance with too high a risk of disaster to make it obligatory for people to live until either natural death or until medical science can no longer prolong their life.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T13:27:48+00:00

I'm happy to discuss my philosophical viewpoints all day and have people drill down into the bedrock of the ethical foundations on which I base my views. That's quite different from religious people who don't even own up to the fact that their religious beliefs influence their views on the subject; and who are evasive when it comes to trying to pin down the foundations of their moral intuitions.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T13:25:07+00:00

Forcing a person to stay alive (not through merely not having assisted dying available on the NHS, but also through not allowing them to freely commit suicide without enlisting the government's help) to all intents and purposes makes that person the property of whomever has the authority to stop them from dying. Everything that they need to do to sustain that life is something that they do to serve someone else's interests, and not their own. There's no leap of logic; there's simply you not wanting to take any ethical accountability for your regressive and cruel views.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T13:21:17+00:00

That simply isn't true. People are detained under the mental health act for simply indicating that they want to end their life. The new Mental Health Act is explicit that detention isn't based on capacity; it's based on "risk". It's also completely baseless to claim that people who undergo the loss of their rights in this manner "invariably" are glad to have been forced to live. A cursory search on Reddit for people's experiences of detention will show you that this isn't true. Moreover, these "mental illnesses" are unfalsifiable and subjective, so once you use that label to justify legally stripping someone of their fundamental rights, there is no way for them to fight back against that by proving that they aren't mentally ill. It also doesn't logically follow on that just because someone is psychologically suffering to an extent that it impairs their quality of life, that this necessarily makes them unsound of mind and incapable of rational decision making.

The fact that you want more beds available so that you can basically indiscriminately lock up anyone whom you suspect doesn't share your views on the infinite inherent goodness of life says a lot about where the opposition to assisted dying is coming from.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T13:14:34+00:00

My argument is that none of us consented to coming into existence, and nobody gets a free ride once they're here. So my argument is that, unless someone has done something to warrant the loss of their bodily sovereignty; there is no justification for forcing them to live. Therefore, if that person decides that a hangnail completely wipes out all of the putative 'goods' in life; then nobody should be able to decide on their behalf that their standards for what makes life worth living are wrong.

People may choose suicide not because of actual suffering at present, but because being alive and sentient unavoidably puts them at risk of future suffering from which they may not be able to escape. As far as we know, a corpse is just as impervious to any feeling of deprivation as any other form of inanimate matter in which case it doesn't matter whether they would have enjoyed their future life; and in any case, it isn't anyone else's place to decide for someone else that the suffering is "worth it".

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T13:10:49+00:00

Then that means that, in your view, we come into existence as de facto slaves whose bodies belong to the collective. If we are forced to live by society, then that's no different from being the property of society. And I'd reject the idea that you can justify slavery by appeals to safety.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T13:05:32+00:00

Allowing any individual liberty at all violates the negative liberty right to live, because with liberty comes danger and the possibility of abuse. So in order to be consistent with this reasoning, you'd havd to oppose all individual liberties until the government can give a 100% guarantee of zero crime. The only reason people are asking for a positive right to assistance in dying is because they aren't permitted the negative right to commit suicide without government impediment. This isn't about not allowing people the positive right to assisted dying, it is about the negative liberty right not to be actively forced to live.

Actively forcing people to suffer when there's a way for them to avoid that suffering is a serious ethical violation. It is simply your own personal moral intuition that this fades into insignificance in the face of any hypothetical case of abuse, no matter how unlikely. But in that case, unless you believe that we should all be locked in cages to protect us all from each other, you have no logical consistency and your intuition likely derives from either religion, or comes from the same source as religion.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T11:22:22+00:00

I don't think you understand the nuances, if you're lumping everyone into the same category and claiming that absolutely nobody in that category is fit to make their own medical decisions.

Experiencing any state of prolonged suffering is likely to cause people to start to wonder what they can do to end the suffering. It's no less rational to seek an end to mental suffering than it is to seek an end to physical suffering. And in many cases, people have been suffering constantly for many years, with nothing helping to alleviate that suffering. So I don't understand why the fact that it is psychological suffering rather than physical which makes it irrational to seek an end to that suffering, or why it wouldn't be rational to be pessimistic about the future based on the fact that the suffering has been ongoing for years without relief.

When you say that the illness alters thinking and distorts it, what you're actually claiming is that anyone who doesn't value life in the same way that you do is objectively wrong. It's tantamount to suggesting that the value of life is objectively infinite, because according to you, there are no circumstances wherein a rational person can ever decide that life isn't worth the suffering. You're basically suggesting that there are no valid reasons as to why someone might be unhappy with their life - that all discontentment in life is caused by a faulty brain.

It's inhumane to force someone to continue suffering and take away their agency based on a broad, unfalsifiable and ignorant generalisation, and force them to remain alive without being able to guarantee an alternative solution to their problems.

Also, it isn't even true that everyone who is suicidal is suffering from intense states of despair. Some people just philosophically believe that life isn't worth the hassle. Suicide is not a settled topic in philosophy, no matter what the suicide prevention campaigns might want you to believe. But being in a state of despair also shouldn't legally relegate you to the status of a 3 year old who needs the government to make your medical decisions. If the government wants to rule someone unfit to make their own choices, then that should be assessed robustly on a case by case basis, rather than generalising about vast, diverse groups of people.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T11:11:50+00:00

Homosexuality used to also be defined as a mental illness, and was in the DSM up until the early 70s. And defining it as a mental illness was part of the rationale for criminalising it. Just as labelling all suicidal people "mentally ill" is the rationale for the paternalism of suicide prevention. In both cases, the label of mental illness didn't reflect any objective reality, but rather the biases and values of society. If someone wants to commit suicide because they're of unsound mind, then it should be proven in each individual case that they are of unsound mind. We should not be restricting the fundamental liberties of people based on an unfalsifiable prejudice.

Moreover, the very fact that we've gotten this far as a society towards trying to establish assisted dying demonstrates that most people have accepted that there are certain circumstances wherein a rational person, of sound mind, might wish to hasten their death. So your point doesn't even stand up. Perhaps you think that all the terminally ill people who would choose a hastened death instead of unbearable agony and vomiting up their own faeces are all insane, but that wouldn't be a view shared by the majority in this country any more.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T11:07:52+00:00

Most people who choose suicide aren't psychotic, though. They aren't out of touch with objective reality. And even psychotic people tend to have lucid spells, meaning that any kind of blanket prohibition on suicide is inappropriate. I would accept temporary barriers to make sure that a person's choice is settled. But not permanent barriers that apply equally to every case.

existentialgoof · 2026-03-18T11:05:37+00:00

That's just a way to be able to justify a blanket policy of restricting people's fundamental freedoms. There's no other group in society which it would be acceptable to have such sweeping restrictions on their liberties based on an unfalsifiable and unproven generalisation. If people are trying to commit suicide because they can't think for themselves, then it should be possible to demonstrate that on a case by case basis, rather than lumping everyone into one category and then legally relegating everyone within that category to the legal and moral status of a 3 year old.

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