I think not living is better than growing up neglected with only bullying as love. It’s better to not live than to watch your relatives live real lives while you sit in a corner playing a video game so you’re out of sight. It’s better to not live than to have everyone in your family hate you for being dependent, but also hate you when you ask for help on being independent. It’s just not a life worth living for both parties. The real relatives deserve real lives that doesn’t involve taking care of some burden nobody wants, and the other shouldn’t live as a burden nobody wants. So many unwanted kids are put in group homes where they stagnate more solely because their parents didn’t want to try raising them. Death is better than living in prison for being unwanted.
Ah yes, ‘because the Nazis did it it’s bad’. You should explain why it’s had for its own sake. The Nazis had bad criteria, such as killing people for being ethnically Jewish or LGBT+, and didn’t factor consent of the person into it. But if the person consents to dying because they recognise their life is so bad, and it’s actually bad in an unfixable way, eg debilitated disability, what is morally wrong with that?
He said “this is eugenics”, which is such an extensively discussed and well documented term that the word itself is sufficient explanation of why it’s bad.
Eugenics doesn’t solely kill disabled people (who, by the way, were also targeted by Nazis), it’s about improving humanity by removing any humans who are undesirable. If you take that first step in removing undesirable disabled people, it’s an easy step to removing undesirable mentally ill people, queer people (because being gay or trans is often considered a mental illness), Jewish people, etc.
It sounds like I’m making a slippery slope argument, and I am to a certain extent. But there’s also a very famous poem about this - “First they came…”
Consent is not usually part of eugenics programs, and the original post was talking about killing children who definitionally can’t consent to such a big decision. This is why we don’t let children buy houses, surgically transition gender, or have sex with adults. And I did specifically mention that painless suicide is an option that I believe a truly free society should provide - for adults.
I realise I didn’t explain why it’s bad for its own sake, as I was asked to… but seriously, murder is wrong whether it’s for eugenics reasons or just because you like killing. Do I have to explain that?
A very thoughtful and considered response. I’d agree that if consent is not a factor, that, in all but some extreme cases (someone in a vegatitive state experiencing extreme suffering, for example), you should not kill someone without consent. I would disagree that only >18 year olds can give informed consent, it is an arbitrary age that is different in many countries and cultures. Perhaps an individual perspective rather than a flat cut off age would be more appropriate.
I apologise for implying that I was not aware disabled people were also killed by the Nazis, and well as Roma and Sinti, political dissidents, etc
I think we agree that assisted suicide should be able for the people who consent, it’s just a matter of the details of who exactly can consent.