[leakycap]

> "Legalising assisted suicide would open a Pandora’s Box of horrors"

Well, non-legal suicide is a huge problem... in other words, people are making this choice whether it is legal or not, at least in some capacities.

Having a legal avenue for someone to go down might actually put them in contact with warm humans or connections that change the outcome.

But Pandora's Box is a weak-ass argument & doesn't reflect reality where legalized suicide exists and no Pandora's Box has appeared.

[jawns]

Several US states that have legalized assisted suicide have polled people who opted for it, to better understand the reasons why it's pursued. [1]

Interestingly, pain is not among the top reasons.

Instead, the top reasons are around a loss of independence (having to depend on other people for care) and a loss of dignity (feeling embarrassed about having to depend on other people for care).

This IS the Pandora's Box, already opened. Our culture is hostile to people who are dependent on others for care. It leads people to worry that they will be a burden on others if they need support. It leads us to look at people with disabilities and think, "I'd rather be dead than in their position." The box has been open for decades, and a rise in acceptance of assisted suicide is just one of many related outcomes.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2265314/

[Yossarrian22]

I don’t think not wanting to endure years of other people having to clean your own feces off of you is a Pandora’s box, I’d take the out if that’s what I had to imminently look forward to

[user_7832]

I wonder how much of this is due to sampling bias.

Folks who're eg depressed tend to "do less" and people in pain or with other such chronic ailments (eg ME/CFS) may have less energy to begin with to "spend".

In a survey, if the effort required to answer isn't very close to zero, you would expect to see lesser responses from such people; however they may be "typically" represented in terms of suicides.

In contrast, otherwise/formerly "healthy" people would not have this issue causing them to be underrepresented in the survey.

[leakycap]

You are invalidating the pain the dependent people feel. Pain they would like to escape, clearly if they're reaching for this option.

You also define dignity as embarrassment which makes me think you don't understand the concept as it relates to the loss someone feels when facing the end of their life.

As an aside: People were terrified of gay marriage and the argument was repeatedly made that legalizing same-sex marriage was going to open a pandora's box.

At the time, I knew this was nonsense because my home state had same-sex civil unions for decades and there had been no problems except a few angry religious people (they weren't forced into gay marriages they just didn't want other people to have that option)