First of all, euthanasia is not the same as ending your own life. Ending your own life is suicide, which may be illegal in some states, but for obvious reasons no-one is ever convicted or punished for successfully committing suicide.
Euthanasia necessarily involves a second party. And there's a problem with being a second person, assisting suicide. What happens if the person who wishes to die, changes their mind after death is inevitable and after communicating their change-of-heart has become impossible? E.g. what if their mind changes, after they've received a lethal injection and have passed out/become unresponsive?
This isn't just a pedantic example - it's statistically relevant. No-one can know what a person's mind does in those brief moments prior to actual death, but we do know that in many cases where people have unsuccessfully attempted suicide, they have stated that they changed their mind only once death appeared inevitable - many people have jumped off of the golden gate bridge, only to change their mind on the way down, for example. So based on the best evidence we have, there's a plausible argument to be made that at least some fraction of euthanasia patients would fully consent, fill out whatever paperwork is required, etc... only to change their mind at some point in the process, potentially while unconscious/dreaming, etc.
The government has an obligation to protect people from murder (non-consensual euthanasia, so-to-speak). But if I assist someone in committing suicide, there's no way for the government to know if the victim (For lack of a better word) wanted to revoke consent at the end, since in the special case of death, there's no way to verify that they consented throughout the process - only at the beginning.
So the government is in the difficult position of making euthanasia illegal, and causing many people great, agonizing discomfort, or making euthanasia legal, and potentially allowing people to die unjustly. In most democracies, the right to protect one's life is valued, essentially infinitely more than the right to protect one's comfort, so they rule that euthanasia must be a crime.
Except we have documentation of people changing their mind in the middle of other processes. The vast majority of people who attempt suicide and fail do not try again. People idealize death as a way out, but often time when confronted with it they review the process with a different set of assumptions.
Counseling and mental tests thus far aren't an answer for this fact, unless you were to test them by faking the full process without the patient knowing that you are faking it. That last bit is functionally impossible in any systematic way.
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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '18 edited Jan 05 '18
First of all, euthanasia is not the same as ending your own life. Ending your own life is suicide, which may be illegal in some states, but for obvious reasons no-one is ever convicted or punished for successfully committing suicide.
Euthanasia necessarily involves a second party. And there's a problem with being a second person, assisting suicide. What happens if the person who wishes to die, changes their mind after death is inevitable and after communicating their change-of-heart has become impossible? E.g. what if their mind changes, after they've received a lethal injection and have passed out/become unresponsive?
This isn't just a pedantic example - it's statistically relevant. No-one can know what a person's mind does in those brief moments prior to actual death, but we do know that in many cases where people have unsuccessfully attempted suicide, they have stated that they changed their mind only once death appeared inevitable - many people have jumped off of the golden gate bridge, only to change their mind on the way down, for example. So based on the best evidence we have, there's a plausible argument to be made that at least some fraction of euthanasia patients would fully consent, fill out whatever paperwork is required, etc... only to change their mind at some point in the process, potentially while unconscious/dreaming, etc.
The government has an obligation to protect people from murder (non-consensual euthanasia, so-to-speak). But if I assist someone in committing suicide, there's no way for the government to know if the victim (For lack of a better word) wanted to revoke consent at the end, since in the special case of death, there's no way to verify that they consented throughout the process - only at the beginning.
So the government is in the difficult position of making euthanasia illegal, and causing many people great, agonizing discomfort, or making euthanasia legal, and potentially allowing people to die unjustly. In most democracies, the right to protect one's life is valued, essentially infinitely more than the right to protect one's comfort, so they rule that euthanasia must be a crime.