Because of religious moralistic bullshit.
Good lord it is way past time to allow people to Euthanize themselves.
Good lord it is way past time to allow people to Euthanize themselves.
Mostly agree. I can also see the other side where there could be concerns about people being pressured into it for a number of reasons, so there should be some safeguards in place to prevent that (if there aren’t already). I don’t know enough about it to really suggest anything though.
Absolutely! There needs to be a clearly delineated procedure and safeguards in place. It is certainly something that should be done under the supervision of a medical provider.
Death with dignity really should be more flexible than it currently is.
Uh, if you kill yourself early the healthcare system won’t be able to extract every last dime of your wealth before you die. What, you think your family deserves to inherit it?
Dogs don’t pay taxes or create new parishoners.
As someone else said: helping humans find a dignified death is legal in some countries.
Your second point is more complicated though: I don’t know the laws in a lot of countries but where I’m from animals are strictly treated as property - emotional connection isn’t taken into strong consideration at all when it comes to assessing their value when it comes to legal fights but they are treated like a distinct thing different from both humans and objects in a lot of other cases (e.g. dedicated laws like “unnecessary” animal cruelty is forbidden ).
About the reason you can discuss as much as you want, the two arguments I’ve stumbled across are:
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there must not be a distinction in terms of value because that value must be purely subjective and cannot be assessed.
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There is no objective way to classify animals based on emotional connection and therefore the law can’t create categories.
Culturally we treat animals like different to humans all the time - even your dog is not treated “family” to the extreme a child would (think of child protection laws and what that would mean if they’d apply to a dog or a hamster). And now expand this to find a definition which covers both a cow someone has as a beloved pet or a meat animal.
Note that I’m trying to not say wether this is “right” or “wrong”: morale categories and laws have some overlap but they are quite lose as soon as you get specific.
My primary source was an interview with a judge who went into an hour long discussion about how complex the relation between animals and the law is and how “emotional connection” and the need for the law to be objective and repeatable are an inherent contradiction.
In short:
It’s a very tough question because there isn’t the one correct answer. Law, morality and personal subjectivity collide and make a mess out of us.
It’s murder if you do this to humans, not euthanasia. The human has to want it.
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This is a tough question. I’ve had to put down a dog and a cat. They were both basically messed up beyond any kind of reasonable care. Like we could have spent tens of thousands of dollars to keep them alive, but they would have been suffering. I haven’t had a dog since that dog, and was almost brought to tears when I saw a dog like him last weekend, but it was cool because the owner let me pet it and it was super friendly.
Cats I honestly don’t care as much about, I guess because cats don’t really bond with people like dogs do. I see cats as more of a utility. You get a cat and it kills things. They’re also way cooler, IMO. But cats like to get hit by cars, they’re dumb as hell, you get another cat, it’s fine. I guess dogs do too, they chase cars, they don’t know any better. My dog was an inside dog (small breed). You can’t do that with cats (or big dogs).
As for people… there are ways. I mean, once you’re of legal age and if you aren’t impaired, you can get a DNR (do not resuscitate) order. There are bracelets. Some people get it tattooed on them. If you’re DNR and you go to the hospital, they can treat you with your consent, but if you cannot consent, they are not allowed to treat you. If they do, it’s legally considered assault. So they won’t do it. They will make you comfortable, but they will let you die. They won’t do anything to quicken your death, either — except in some places where they will.
I believe anyone should be able to choose to have their life medically terminated, if they are suffering and of sound mind and body. I have no religious opposition to it. If someone I loved made that choice, I would be sad, but I would not tell them they can’t. That’s not for me to say.
I guess because cats don’t really bond with people like dogs do.
I used to believe this, too, until I bonded with a cat. It’s definitely a different relationship than with a dog but just as valid, in my experience. Their personalities are different from dogs and vary much more from cat to cat than dog personalities do.
I have one cat that is dumb as hell and another that is sometimes dumb, but surprisingly socially intelligent and really changed the way I understand cats.
I think it is easy to come to the conclusion that cats are not as social as dogs, because the way they communicate is very subtle and a bit counterintuitive to humans.
My stepfather made use of Oregon’s Death With Dignity law. Him scheduling his death a week out was… weird, but I’m always glad it was an option.
Though at one point a doc did legally have to inform him that instead of the painless and easy medical assisted death he could instead choose to stop eating or drinking.
Society does not value animal lives as much as human lives. You’re free to draw your personal line elsewhere.
Because legally, pets are chattel.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chattelJesus.
Surprised I didn’t see this higher. Mostly it’s due to religion.
Religion, chiefly.
This is changing. In slow, small ways but it is changing. Where i live voluntary assisted dying has been enshrined in law since 2017
It depends on the state, actually. Some states allow that.
Ibfind it ironic that to put an animal out of it’s misery is called being “humane” though to do it to another person is called “homicide”.
Well it’s the definition of homicide, which is just death caused by another person.
Because religion.
God this is a weird thread.
How come human laws don’t apply to animals?
Sorry to break it to you kids but billions of people all over the world literally eat animals every day.
Barbaric ? Perhaps, but it’s fair to assume that 100% of your ancestors in the last 100,000 years have delighted in this activity as often as possible.
You may not wish to acknowledge this but the reality is: your beloved dog or cat is a lesser being, assigned very few rights.
Obviously if you have a pet dog then you treat that dog differently as you would a chicken living in a cage in a shed with 10,000 other chickens in cages but that dog’s right to life is merely an extension of your rights as that dog’s owner.
- Pets are not intellectually capable of communicating their feelings or desires to humans, so it is up to us as humans to assess the quality of life of our animals in order to prevent them from needless suffering. There is nothing wrong with trying to treat animal illnesses, if you have the resources to do so and can make sure that the animal is maintaining a good quality of life–but that’s sadly not always the case. We love our pets and we all want them to live happily forever after, but the sad truth is that they will eventually get old and sick and (unless they die suddenly) one of the most important acts of compassion that we owe them is giving them a humane end of life without suffering. It is sad. It breaks our fucking hearts. But it is our duty and our responsibility to them, and in a strange way, it is an act of love. We owe it to our pets to take care of them in life and in death.
- Unlike pets, human beings are typically thought to have agency and the ability to express their own wishes regarding their end of life. We can’t really decide that “ok, grandma is lives enough, time to put her down”, because even if we can see that her quality of life has degraded, we understand that it is not our decision to make whether she can continue to try to live.
- In some parts of the world, human beings do have the right to choose when to end their own life via physician-assisted suicide, especially in cases where they have some terminal prognosis where they know that their quality of life will not stay high if they continue to live. I don’t envy being put in this position, and it’s terribly sad to think about, but I do think that it’s ethically the right thing to do to allow for that.
