I’m disabled and live in Canada where we have medically assisted suicide as a legal option, and some people who are disabled and mistreated by the government that ignores the plight of the less fortunate, feel that government views disabled people as a burden and it would be preferable for society or government for the disabled people to just choose to end their suffering.
Not sure if I believe that, but it sort of makes (twisted, dark) sense.
This is absolutely the primary non-religious argument against euthanasia, and it's a serious one; what happens to the priorities of a healthcare system that "prices in" assisted dying?
Discussions like this have even happened around the Liverpool Care Pathway in the UK.
I don't really know how I feel about it, except to say that my once-strong certainty that I (as someone with no dependents) would choose such a route has been softened by witnessing the astonishing care and dedication in end-of-life care even in a very overstretched NHS.
I just don't think it's fair to suggest that there is a European end-of-life-care industry that would "astroturf" this discussion; those are not the ways in which it operates.
Once the practice is normalized, there is potential for the concept to be broadened in availability to anyone who wants it. Then we are only one step away from mandating it for certain people or groups.
Abortion has been around for a while and no one's out there trying to abort pregnancies in their last trimester. I don't think everything is necessarily a slippery slope.
Planned parenthood evolved from the eugenics movement.
Environmentalists and anti-natalists, would like less people on the planet.
I’m sure there is a list of people and groups who don’t mind the population thinning itself.