I'm conflicted on a referendum. There's danger in letting elites decide and danger in the uninformed who've only read their mates Facebook comment getting a say. It would become toxic and divisive aswell. Ppl acting like those in favour are about to run at their disabled loved ones with a giant syringe.
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I'm not sure how I feel about this topic. After watching my mother slowly decline due to dementia I would prefer not to go the same way.
I also have dual Australian-Canadian citizenship, I wonder if they would allow people like me who haven't lived in Canada for many years to utilise the facilities, as it were? It's a minefield.
I also have dual Australian-Canadian citizenship, I wonder if they would allow people like me who haven't lived in Canada for many years to utilise the facilities, as it were? It's a minefield.
I think for me, it boils down to whether or not the potential for good is outweighed by the potential for abuse. Alcohol causes untold misery in thousands of lives, yet we still don't stop everyone from drinking because some people don't know when to stop. Thousands of people are injured or killed in road traffic accidents every year but we still allow people to drive. I fully understand anyone's misgivings but at the same time, I would absolutely want this option for myself if I was in a position where the only outcome is pain and a slow, horrible death.
I wonder if ultimately it's about whether you believe life is worth having at any cost or you don't. I remember when I used to do that perennial teenage moan of 'I didn't ask to be born' being told I'd know how ridiculous that was when I had kids of my own but I agreed with it more when I had them. No one asks to be born, no one asks to be ill, the modern world is such a treadmill, it'd be a comfort to me to know I could get off cleanly and painlessly if it became unbearable.
Our generation faces working til we're 70. Caring for elderly parents will absolutely not be on the agenda for me on top of that and I feel zero guilt on that front. Years ago the older women of the family were free to care for elderly relatives; they worked part time or the household could manage on one wage. My own mum hasn't worked since the early 80s, at my age she was free to pootle about seeing to ageing parents. We don't live like that now. I don't know a single family with school age kids where the mum works anything less than FT. The expectation that we should also want to care for elderly parents no matter what is just another way of guilt tripping and shaming women. It's relevant to convos on AD because the expectation is still there that the women of the family should embrace caring roles on top of anything and everything else they've got going on. Same as that horrible expression 'it takes a village to raise a child' basically means 'my female relatives should all muck in and help me on demand with a tit eating grin on their faces'.
Not wanting to be a burden to others is absolutely valid, noble and not remotely controversial to me. My job as a mum is to care for my kids, forever and no matter what age. It will never be the other way round.
Our generation faces working til we're 70. Caring for elderly parents will absolutely not be on the agenda for me on top of that and I feel zero guilt on that front. Years ago the older women of the family were free to care for elderly relatives; they worked part time or the household could manage on one wage. My own mum hasn't worked since the early 80s, at my age she was free to pootle about seeing to ageing parents. We don't live like that now. I don't know a single family with school age kids where the mum works anything less than FT. The expectation that we should also want to care for elderly parents no matter what is just another way of guilt tripping and shaming women. It's relevant to convos on AD because the expectation is still there that the women of the family should embrace caring roles on top of anything and everything else they've got going on. Same as that horrible expression 'it takes a village to raise a child' basically means 'my female relatives should all muck in and help me on demand with a tit eating grin on their faces'.
Not wanting to be a burden to others is absolutely valid, noble and not remotely controversial to me. My job as a mum is to care for my kids, forever and no matter what age. It will never be the other way round.
I had no idea this was possible in my state, I only knew of the Northern Territory having assisted dying. I expect one would have to be almost at death's door already to access the service but it's there.
www.health.vic.gov.au
Voluntary assisted dying
The Victorian Government believes all Victorians are entitled to quality end of life care, which relieves pain and suffering, and provides compassionate support to family, friends and carers.
www.health.vic.gov.au
Women already experience higher levels of poverty in retirement due to career breaks in their early working life to take care of children, which has knock-on effects on their pensions.
I have colleagues who are feeling extraordinary guilt because they are torn between the needs of their children and their elderly parents and they cannot take care of both while working.
My concerns about the assisted dying bill are primarily around safeguards against coercion, and the current state of both social care and palliative care.
The majority of local authorities in the UK are social care providers with a weird sideline in bins and streetlights. Hampshire spends 83% of its budget on the provision of social care services to adults and children, as an example.
I can easily see a situation where social care is further undermined and underfunded because assisted dying is available, and given a choice between inadequate and underfunded care or assisted death, people may feel coerced into a decision that they didn't really want to make.
Financial abuse and coercion of the elderly and/or otherwise vulnerable is a thing already. If your parents having an assisted death means you can pay off the mortgage, rather than see that money be handed over to the private equity firm who owns the care home, there will be people who pressure their parents to go down that route.
Isn't it the opposite that is happening though where assisted dying is legal, It's the Parents that want to go down the assisted dying route to preserve their inheritance to their Children rather than the Children encouraging their Parents.
The key difference is whether, as an individual you value life at all costs or whether quality of life is important.
I absolutely do not want to finish my days sitting in a communal lounge waiting for my next meal which is what 95% of people living in Nursing homes spend their days doing.
My Mums neighbour used to be the most social person, always off somewhere, now she sits in a home occasionally getting visitors she doesn't even remember. Who benefits from that other than the home. Her quality of life is about 1% of what it was.
100%. The days of housewives and single breadwinners are long gone. Something desperately needs to be done on the provision of social care for the elderly and disabled. It's not cheap and frankly, why should it be? These are highly skilled roles often paid an absolute pittance. My elderly MIL has mobility issues and the package of care when she recently came out of hospital was paltry. She needs someone to help her with cleaning, but even finding a cleaner to come in once a week was difficult.
I'm all for giving people the choice of AD but as others have said, it can't be used as another option in place of a broken social care system.
Both are happening. It will always be difficult/impossible to prove, but I know of people who have had their hands in their parents' pockets all their lives and are currently making extremely off-colour "jokes" about the prospect of AD being brought in.
My husband is older than me, his mum is in her 90s and hasn't recognised him for years. He no longer visits because she gets agitated at this big beardy man trying to talk to her. She used to spit at him. She lies in a bed clutching a teddy and staring at the ceiling not knowing her own name. He doesn't want to bump her off for a house cos there isn't one. He just wants her out of this locked in pointless purgatory.
Oh, man. It's so horribly cruel for all parties. My mum would be ok then all of a sudden she'd look really frightened as if she didn't know who we were. She didn't get to the violent stage but she wasn't the woman we knew and loved.
I don't want to put anyone through what my step dad went through trying to keep her at home as long as he could. I don't want to be lost and frightened, it must be hell on earth.
I lost two friends - one 30s, one early 40s - who both suffered horrific, drawn-out deaths due to cancer. I don't want the same for myself or anyone else I love.
Watched some of the debate in parliament today. Ledbetter is all kinds of wrong. She’s a narcissist who wants to make a name for herself.
she refuses to listen to all of the palliative care orgs who are against this bill.
Sadly I think this is going to pass , as there are lots of vested interests involved.
As for the idiot Esther Rantzen- I thought I couldn’t detest her any more!
she refuses to listen to all of the palliative care orgs who are against this bill.
Sadly I think this is going to pass , as there are lots of vested interests involved.
As for the idiot Esther Rantzen- I thought I couldn’t detest her any more!
Not sure what vested interests those are, there is far less money in helping someone die than there is in keeping someone alive.
The easy solution is for people to be able to lodge their wishes with their GP before they get ill so there can be no accusations of coercion. I absolutely do not want to go into a nursing home ever. That is not living.
I have a neurological condition that has already rendered me paraplegic and will gradually take more and more from me, until I am not me anymore . My swallow is already unreliable. I rely on a supra pubic catheter and have a stoma bag.
While my quality of life now is fine, it is very different to my old life. I am surrounded by the best of friends and an incredibly supportive family.
As my disease takes more from me, losing my swallow, the use of my arms, being unable to sit unassisted, needing to be hoisted everytime I need to move, requiring bed baths and having my hair washed over the end of my bed. Losing my speech. Not being able to tell my children I love them again. Or how proud I am of them. Or to laugh with them again.
I am 44. I could live for years, bed bound, unable to communicate, totally reliant on care 24/7.
I have no desire to put my family though that. I don't want to go through that. We have discussed it at length. I wish I lived somewhere where I could make the choice about my life, with the support of my family. Where I could die a 'good' death, surrounded by those who I love with the things - music, scents etc , that comfort me.
Instead I face dying a cruel death, paralysed (for want of a better word,) with a complete loss of facilities, completely reliant on other people to wipe my dribble and use cough assist on me.
No thank you. Not for me.
(I didn't write this for any sympathy, I am as OK as I can be with it all and have reached a level of acceptance.)
Let me choose.
While my quality of life now is fine, it is very different to my old life. I am surrounded by the best of friends and an incredibly supportive family.
As my disease takes more from me, losing my swallow, the use of my arms, being unable to sit unassisted, needing to be hoisted everytime I need to move, requiring bed baths and having my hair washed over the end of my bed. Losing my speech. Not being able to tell my children I love them again. Or how proud I am of them. Or to laugh with them again.
I am 44. I could live for years, bed bound, unable to communicate, totally reliant on care 24/7.
I have no desire to put my family though that. I don't want to go through that. We have discussed it at length. I wish I lived somewhere where I could make the choice about my life, with the support of my family. Where I could die a 'good' death, surrounded by those who I love with the things - music, scents etc , that comfort me.
Instead I face dying a cruel death, paralysed (for want of a better word,) with a complete loss of facilities, completely reliant on other people to wipe my dribble and use cough assist on me.
No thank you. Not for me.
(I didn't write this for any sympathy, I am as OK as I can be with it all and have reached a level of acceptance.)
Let me choose.
I can see the argument for the bill but I strongly think they must fund proper palliative care so that the state offers a proper choice. It shouldn't be down to charities to provide hospice care. And there needs to be so many safe guards in place for vulnerable people too.
It's too easy to have strong opinions on this if its something you aren't facing or have experience of.
It's too easy to have strong opinions on this if its something you aren't facing or have experience of.
I watched a documentary on people in comas and families having to make the decision to turn off life support. There was one guy who the family was adamant he'd want to be switched off but it turned out he had some awareness of what was going on around him. To cut a long story short they worked out how to communicate with him and he didn't want to be switched off. I remember the nurse saying its easy to say what you'd like if you aren't facing it so i think an advance order in some cases is the right thing.
Five mp’s have changed their mind and are going to now vote against.
I think it needs to be 12 to defeat it, so very unlikely to happen.
Scary times for vulnerable people in this country.
I think it needs to be 12 to defeat it, so very unlikely to happen.
Scary times for vulnerable people in this country.
I am in awe of you. This is powerful.