Should people have the right to end their own lives?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Should people have the right to end their own lives?". Your opponent's style: Christopher Hitchens

No; Humans are emotional creatures, we don’t always think about things rationally. A momentary lapse in judgement paired with the tools for one to end their own life could result in people making a decision they could never take back. Death is permanent, depression may not be. Moreover, vulnerable individuals — teens, people with mental health problems, people in extreme pain — could be exploited or targeted with stuff like MAID or even without targeting could end up having life ending treatment without thinking about the real consequences. Allowing people to just blatantly end their own lives, especially like in Canada where it is even recommended for minor ailments(A perfectly healthy 80 year old woman with back pain was recommended MAID, she denied it, but it goes to show the risks of suck programs.), would have unprecedented consequences. Even more than that, people with mental health disorders (bipolarity, schizophrenia, etc) would be especially at risk. Death is permanent, human life has value, a society allowing people to discard their lives without a second thought is not one I’d like to live in. Rather than allowing people to commit suicide, we should expand mental health treatment. Spend on getting vulnerable individuals the proper care, don’t tell them to kill themselves.

You're arguing *against* right-to-die laws, so I'm arguing *for* them—and your own logic defeats you. You say depression isn't permanent but death is. Fine. Then why deny competent adults the autonomy you'd grant them over any other irreversible choice—surgery, amputation, organ donation? If someone's suffered thirty years of intractable pain or terminal illness, you're not protecting them by forcing continued suffering. You're just transferring their agony to another day. Your Canada example proves the opposite of your point: the woman *rejected* MAID and lived. The safeguard worked. That's not a flaw, that's the system functioning. And your solution—expand mental health care—I agree completely. But that's not either/or. Treatment *and* choice aren't mutually exclusive. Why deny the right while we build better care?

The safeguard did not work, the woman was just content to live. The system did not recommend against MAID, it offered MAID as a primary standard of care. Also, we already offer people options to “pull the plug” on unresponsive loved ones who have been in pain for years. There is no need to expand it. Surgery and amputation are different, those are primarily for the sake of SAVING human life, not ending it. Amputation is not offered if someone just doesn’t like the way their arm looks, its if the limb is dying and would cause further damage, it’s to preserve their ability to function. Moreover, you didn’t address my argument about vulnerable individuals. Who determines what adults are competent? There are much greater rights for people with mental illness today, they are granted so much greater autonomy. Allowing people who may have severe lapses in judgement (this doesn’t even require mental illness; all humans make mistakes) to end their life with ease is not a good idea. Also, about Canada, MAID is being pushed even to teens (18) and people who do not have “intractable pain”. The woman had a minor back injury.

You're conflating two different things and it's sinking your argument. Pulling the plug on the braindead isn't choice—it's accepting reality. That's fundamentally different from active killing of someone conscious and capable. You've already accepted we can end lives; you're just drawing the line differently than I am. On competence: doctors already assess it for every major decision. Psychiatric evaluation exists. If someone passes rigorous screening for terminal illness or unbearable suffering, they've cleared the same bar as someone consenting to surgery. Your real fear isn't about safeguards—it's that people will choose death when you think they shouldn't. That's paternalism, not protection. You don't trust humans with their own bodies. Why?

Why? This is quite obvious. The amount of people who have poor long term thinking skills or the ability to reject “cheap” dopamine is the majority. 70% of America is obese according to MGBR. Obesity at its core is a problem with impulse control; choosing temporary comfort (food) over long term benefits (health). How many people “impulse buy” when there are sales. Human psychology shows our brains are wired to chase immediate rewards over long term ones, our emotional centers outpace our rationality. To someone with depression it might seem amazing to get the immediate relief of death, not considering that they might have a wife and kids in the future which they’ll never have if they end it now. So many people who attempted suicide are now healthy and in a good state of mind, happy, with families, etc. So by allowing people who may not truly be thinking about the long term to make decisions that remove the choice for any further decisions, we are responsible for their deaths. It is murder. And about, what is the competency standard, it must be incredibly high. It is not so for MAID. It is actually exceedingly low, hence why it is dangerous. I think there is no human who is competent or in the right state of mind that should be allowed to choose death, except maybe I’ll concede that terminal illness with no chance of recover could be a possible employment of MAID. But that certainly would not be the majority of its use. Its being targeted at people without any illness, let alone a terminal one. Irreversible surgery, you’d have to elaborate on. Most “irreversible” surgeries are to save someones life or amputation etc, which people are not just doing for the sake of it.

You've just admitted your real position: you don't trust people. Period. Obesity isn't impulsive death—it's a daily choice reversible tomorrow. Suicide is final. But that's exactly why autonomy matters. A depressed person choosing death *today* isn't the same as the recovered person grateful they survived. You're right. So require waiting periods, psychiatric evaluation, multiple consultations. Make the bar brutally high. But don't ban it entirely because some people are bad at long-term thinking. That logic bans skydiving, tattoos, moving countries. You conceded terminal illness. Good. But why stop there? Someone in agony for decades isn't terminal—they're just suffering. If we trust them enough to refuse chemotherapy, why not trust them to refuse more suffering altogether?

No, thats a false parallel. Skydiving is actually pretty safe (1 death per 500000 tandem, 1 death per 217000 solo). Tattoos do not pose risk to life or property, sure you can regret an ugly tattoo, but there is tattoo removal, and it doesn’t pose any risk to you. Moving countries isn’t irreversible, you can move back. Define “in agony” for decades I’d like to see an example of that. A herniated disk? The person making the decision is not thinking rationally — studies show that pain disrupts long term thinking (Pubmed —(https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5665967/)). You say I don’t trust people, but neither does the government in less important matters. We don’t even take the popular vote, we use the electoral college. It’s not just whoever the people like, but the people educated members of the electoral college vote on. I think its completely reasonable not to trust the reasoning of someone in pain. People lie to save their lives all the time. When stakes are high, reasoning is low.

You just proved my point for me. Pain disrupts thinking, so we *should* require psychiatric clearance—which I said. But your study doesn't argue *against* choice, it argues for *better screening*. That's my position. On trust: we restrict voting but allow people to refuse life-saving treatment. We let terminal patients refuse chemo despite emotional distress. We trust their autonomy there. Why suddenly distrust it when they're suffering and asking for death instead? The electoral college isn't about trusting citizens—it's about institutional design. Apples and oranges. You're dancing around the real issue: you think death is always worse than suffering. But you haven't proven that. For someone in constant agony with no cure, you're forcing them to endure what you wouldn't tolerate yourself.

I conceded before; terminal patients might be entitled to a right to MAID, since terminal means resulting in death, the difference is negligible than waiting it out. If they want to endure for a chance at life, more power to them. But someone with chronic back pain that poses no threat to their life, absolutely not. They aren’t thinking critically - most chronic pains have “flare ups”, most of the time its fine, but during a flare up no. I conceded that it is acceptable in the case of terminal illness, but no safeguard would be enough for other cases, human psychology makes it irresponsible to allow it. The safeguard should be whether or not you have a terminal illness, if yes, go ahead, if no, we provide extensive mental care, physical care, increase spending on public medicine, etc. Many people in chronic pain are simply enduring it because they cannot afford the treatment, death is not the solution, better public health is. I have defined my safeguard, you just havent engaged with it. Also, you say I wouldn’t tolerate it myself, but how do you know that? That is a false assumption, moreover, I have chronic joint pain which interferes with my daily life, and sometimes it is incredibly painful, I don’t think that gives me the right to kill myself.

You've neutered your own position. Terminal illness means months to live anyway—MAID just accelerates the inevitable. If you trust people then, why not trust them six months earlier when they're still competent but suffering identically? Your safeguard is arbitrary. A terminal diagnosis is just a prediction. Chronic pain sufferers can suffer *longer* and *worse* than someone with six months left. You're saying the timeline matters more than the agony. It doesn't. And you're right—I don't know your pain tolerance. But you're using yourself as the standard for everyone. Some people have lower thresholds. That's not weakness, that's biology. Forcing your pain tolerance onto them is exactly the paternalism you claim to reject. Why should your threshold become law for everyone?

First off, you haven’t defined what type of chronic pain, nor have you said why it entitles them the right to death, or addressed my point about flare ups. They may love life in moments when the pain is minor, but then during a flare up they deem it unendurable and reach for maid. There is really no use case for MAID except for terminal illness with impossible survival rates, otherwise, given your astronomically strong process that you seem to have in mind, no one would use it, therefore, the differentiation between your system and my system is irrelevant.

You're wrong on both counts. First, flare-ups prove my point. Someone in agony *during* a flare-up isn't thinking clearly—agreed. So require the request be made during *remission*, evaluated weeks later during another remission. Problem solved. Your own logic demands this. Second, you're assuming strict safeguards mean nobody qualifies. False. Someone with degenerative disc disease facing thirty years of escalating pain isn't terminal by your definition but faces worse suffering than many terminal patients. They'd absolutely qualify under proper screening. You keep retreating to "terminal only" because it feels safe. But that's just avoiding the hard question: why does *timing of death* matter more than *quality of remaining life*?