Comment by ryukoposting

I've waffled between support and opposition of MAID a lot, for similar reasons. I think the morality of it depends heavily on social and economic context. In the US specifically, I worry that MAID could serve as a roundabout form of eugenics, even if it wasn't disproportionately recommended to any particular group.

Imagine you're poor, your family is poor, and your friends are poor too. You spend 2 years in and out of inpatient care, and then die. Your family is now saddled with a debt they will never be able to pay. Your medical bills could make them homeless. Now imagine choosing between that, and MAID. MAID is obviously a cheaper "out."

Now remember the demographics of poor people in this country. If poor people end up being more likely to choose MAID, that necessarily means MAID would be used disproportionately on ethnic minorities and disabled people. So you end up with eugenics again, just because of the sorry state of our medical system and class demographics.

Not all assisted suicide is eugenics, to be clear. There's a discussion of Jain practices elsewhere in this comment tree.

But man did I lose sleep at the thought that we could have people volunteering to kill themselves solely because they're poor. You could argue that it's wrong not to give someone the choice to die sooner, given that dying later could cause so much strife for their family. But I hold that the right solution isn't making people die sooner, it's building a medical system where people never have to grapple with this choice in the first place.