I’m probably older than the average on Lemmy, and the older you get the more you see of the reality. I’ve had to take care of a dying parent, I’m aging myself, and the older I get the more I can count on personally knowing people that are having to fight massive battles just to make these decisions in regard to their own lives.

The way I see it, it has absolutely nothing to do with a person and their own choices – which is where the power to decide life or death issues should absolutely reside – but the personal fears of people that are NOT in that situation, but they’ve never addressed their own fears so they need to tamp that down for everyone else. It’s an outsourcing of their own inability to parse the realities of end-of-life situations and care.

This is not just a mere guess on my part, but something that has come from me actually listening and asking these no-assisted-death-ever people. If you sit down with them casually, and ask them questions about what they’re saying, not acrimoniously but in a way that expresses a real desire to know, “What makes you think ___?” and “Why do you feel so strongly about ___?” inevitably, without exception, by question #3 if not sooner, it’s a personal fear.

And not just a personal fear, but one completely unaccompanied by any sense of self-awareness that maybe, just perhaps, someone else might have just as strong feelings about their own demise as that person has about preventing them from bringing about that demise a bit sooner. I have had this conversation SOOO many times now, with kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews who are all absolutely adamant that Granny hang on until the very last possible gasp of air when the truth is that Granny fucking hates her life and every time she’s lucid enough to speak she says she wants to die.

Also, older people generally don’t level this argument: even the ones that are against euthanasia of any form for themselves don’t care too much about other adults making the decisions for themselves, because they’re of an age where they know just how bad it can be. It’s almost always the younger ones who literally cannot grok a living human existence that is so painful and excruciating that someone no longer wants to live it, desperate to believe that there’s medical help, or some kind of fix, or some sort of saving grace, or something. Yeah? Where’s that fix for Alzheimers, or even long term anorexia? Well what about drugs? Nursing homes are not opium dens, lol. And doctors are losing their licenses for prescribing scheduled drugs even when they can prove medical necessity; they’re not going to do it where they cannot.

There are people in this thread posting exactly that kind of nonsense, and dollars to donuts they’re under the age of 50 themselves. Can’t face death, can’t even think about it, anyone who wants out must be weak and a loser, etc. Nope. The only weak among us are those who cannot bear at all even the thought of someone deciding their own death.

In a nutshell, it’s just one more societal case of “you have to suffer so that I can feel good about it and not actually have to face my own fears.”