My mother died a medically-assisted death. She was mentally competent to make the request and then follow through at the end, but she couldn’t physically do much of anything; she was completely reliant on her kids to jump through all the hoops on her behalf. It was up to her children to make doctor appointments, transport her to them, sign documents, go to multiple pharmacies to get the prescriptions filled (not every pharmacy is willing to fill a prescription for a fatal dose of Seconal), plan a family gathering, and dissolve the Seconal in water, and then hold the bottle with a straw in it so she could drink it.
We didn’t “turn off the machine”, but I don’t think what we did was meaningfully different. None of us feels any “burden” for having helped her die the way that she wanted. Quite the contrary, if she had begged for a merciful release from life and we had all steadfastly refused, I think we would have been very much haunted by that.
That’s probably the case for assisting a parent with their death in places where it’s illegal, as it could put the kids at risk of prosecution. But where medically-assisted death is legal, people can and do choose to talk about their role in the death of a loved one, although they might be selective about who they tell.
If you’re arguing that fear of being a burden on one’s children isn’t a legit reason to want to die, well, you’re certainly entitled to burden your children as much as they’re willing to bear, but other people feel differently. As far as I know, in places where medically-assisted death is legal, they don’t ask why you want to die. In Colorado for example, you are eligible for medical aid in dying if you are:
- an adult
- terminally ill
- given a prognosis of six months or less to live
- mentally capable of making your own healthcare decisions.
“Quality of life” is the very abstract term that gets tossed about in discussions like this, but it means different things for different people, as this thread shows. A lot of folks think it’s about pain, but it might also mean an inability to do the things you used enjoy, or feeling a loss of dignity because you can no longer go to the bathroom without assistance. And for some folks, the knowledge that they are consuming a large portion of their children’s time and money is a thing that causes them a lot of anguish. I imagine it doesn’t feel good knowing that your kids can’t take their kids to Disneyworld because they can’t leave you unattended (or because they’re spending their travel money to help pay your assisted-living bill).