Euthanasia, which is the practice of intentionally ending life in order to relieve the patient of their pain and suffering, is a particularly controversial topic in which many parties bring in their individual biases and opinions on how end-of-life care should be carried out. This topic in particular has grown interest in recent years with the start of minors participating in this practice. Belgium amended a law in 2014 to legalize euthanasia for minors. They were the second nation to ever do so following the Netherlands. However, unlike the Netherlands, Belgian physicians are under scrutiny because euthanasia is allowed for patients under the age of 12. After lethal injections to Belgian minors - aged 9, 11, and 17 respectively - questions have risen regarding whether euthanasia should even be an option for minors. However, it is important to note that euthanasia requests need to meet a specific set of requirements to be granted. These include confirming that the minor is terminally ill and in a state of suffering, and that they (the minor) is mentally capable of requesting euthanasia. Moreso, the consent of a parent is also required.

The questions I'd like to pose are: whether you think children should have the option to request euthanasia, and if parents should have a say in their childrens' request (if not, then who should have the ultimate authority).


Here are some articles that I read prior to submitting this thread.
BBC
Washington Post

Generally speaking there is no reason why child euthanasia shouldn't be a thing. It's really stupid if you have to wait until your 18th birthday to be willingly euthanized.

As for who should have the authority, I think all 3 parties (child, parent, and doctor/hospital) should agree with the decision before proceeding, since those are all of the parties involved.

People doing strikes against this honestly have no argument to give. If someone wants to leave this world and their relatives consent to it, who's to say that it's wrong? People strike for the stupidest shit ever these days. If you love life then go ahead and treasure people around you, don't shove your morals down other people's throats.

i think the motive behind these people's opinion is religion and nothing more.


anyway, i looked the requirements that must be met to do such a thing and i think its fair enough. i mean, if someone is suffering,going to die soon and there is nothing that can cure them i don't see any problem then.



acually one of the requirements is that you wont be able to live more than 6 months so its useless to age restrict such a thing because minors are not going to reach the required age anyway.


and if you were 12 having a life threatening desease and suffering but will be able to reach the age of 18 you may be lucky enough that a cure is made in these 6 years. its a possibility that your suffering will end without having to give up your life.


so yeah, its pretty much impossible to get a valid argument against eutahanasia as it is now.

Even though I am pro-euthanasia, try to put yourself in the trigger puller's shoes. How would you feel killing someone? How would you feel if your job required you to kill multiple people? It's traumatising.

Well to be honest if I put myself in their shoes, I feel I would find myself at peace.
To be suffering to the point of not wanting to live anymore is a terrible feeling, and the fact that these are terminal illnesses that cannot be cured only makes it worse.

By ending their suffering I would feel im doing them a service.

The only counter argument I can think of is that kids do not have the correct mental capacity to make such enormous decisions. The average human brain is not fully developed until 25, and decision making capabilities are very very limited in the teenage years. It is similar to allowing little children to be on hormones to change their gender, when they are not fully capable of making the decision.

call me fucked up but i'm one of those people who would rather the option wasn't on the table if i got that ill
perhaps the death can be prolonged with a few months, and a breakthrough or new treatment option be made available in that time, if so only to further prolong the lifespan and increase the chances of a bigger breakthrough to happen
i dont put much value in a dignified death, or "he's in a better place now" ways of thinking

there might be an issue here with families not being able to afford 4 months of dying in a hospital though, in which case i'd perhaps concede the responsible thing of an ill father to do would be accept his death and rescue his family from horrendous debt by cutting his hospital stay short.

not a workplace id like to be anywhere near, that's for sure
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i guess my big thing is i'd want the patients to have to be terminally ill by tomorrows standards, not just todays

I understand the concern, but we have to think about probability here. If up to this day there's still no cure whatsoever, then most likely researchers are not even close to something that could produce positive results. Is it worth suffering for years while waiting? That's up to the person himself.


Depends from person to person, what's traumatizing about killing a person isn't the act itself but mainly its reasons and consequences. If as a medic you are doing your job and those people are specifically asking for help because they don't want to endure all of that suffering anymore, then it's very different than just killing.

can you expand on where you'd cut off each side of "tomorrow" there? I feel like continuing that line of thought would be an interesting read because it's a totally different dynamic.

sure, i'll try to clarify my thinking but admittedly i have no clear-cut answer since we run into the same issue as the abortion topic of on what precise second a life truly begins, and when it can be considered over
i will leave links to related articles i pulled off google in my post for further reading, although you just have to skim through to get my point

So..
Some years ago I read some articles about a young man who suffered severe chronical pain, and was repeatedly denied assisted suicide by his government.
He ended up killing himself some other way, with the blessing of his close family but what rubbed me the wrong way about this is the uncertainty of the life they could've had 'tomorrow'.
With today's recent breakthroughs towards things such as CBD-oil related treatments against Parkinson's decease, and recent progress with Psilocybin against a variety of issues related to the neural-structure of the brain, I find it easier to see a glass half full.
These are relatively new areas of research that are already bringing solutions to problems we otherwise had no good treatment for, if any.

I dislike judging the future the same way we did just 5 or 10 years ago, the amount of insane technology we already use is incomprehensible.
The truth of the matter seems to be that we don't know what's to come, and I guess that's essentially an argument made out of ignorance, but it seems right to me to admit the future is more uncertain than ever
From my fundamental value of human life I come to the conclusion that it wouldn't matter in the end if I was hung upside-down and tortured, as long as I lived through it.
I just wouldn't want the option of suicide available in the moment, regardless if it would take months to finalize the process.

I'll pose a question to anyone who wants to reply: would you be for the daughter of Josef Fritzl to kill herself 23 years into her nightmare, a year before she was found? Do you think she enjoys and values her life today?
For the record she's currently 51 and has entered into a relationship, according to The Sun

We've strayed from euthanasia into general suicide (an important distinction) but...

Everybody has their breaking point and people ought to be allowed to end things if they so desire. Obviously, euthanasia, since another party is involved, ought only be permitted in a situation where any reasonable person would agree that the life this person is leading is not a life worth living anymore.

I wouldn't bemoan Fritzl's daughter for killing herself, but obviously euthanasia is out of the question. Her suffering is eased by the removal of her father.

I'll flip it back around to you. You have a child (13 yrs old) and every waking moment, he/she is in enormous pain and cannot perform any personal care. Doctors know that a cure won't be technologically possible for at least another 20 years. Your child has asked you to allow him/her to die.

Constant, blistering pain - All day, everyday. Cannot eat, bathe or use a toilet without assistance. Are you going to keep your child alive (against his or her wishes) and condemn them to many more years of suffering on the basis that, someday, far in the future, a cure will be found?

Every action carries with it a moral weight. Does an action result in the proliferation of general wellbeing, or does an action result in the proliferation of suffering? This is utilitarianism.

I would argue that 30+ years of every waking moment being excruciatingly painful outweighs the ~50ish remaining years of a normal life (assuming a cure is actually developed).

(ofc, when the child is 18, it could always just choose euthanasia legally, but you're still adding 5 years of unnecessary suffering to it's life)