1mo ago

Should parents be allowed to euthanize their children if they have a diagnosis that just isn't worth dealing with?

I think not living is better than growing up neglected with only bullying as love. It's better to not live than to watch your relatives live real lives while you sit in a corner playing a video game so you're out of sight. It's better to not live than to have everyone in your family hate you for being dependent, but also hate you when you ask for help on being independent. It's just not a life worth living for both parties. The real relatives deserve real lives that doesn't involve taking care of some burden nobody wants, and the other shouldn't live as a burden nobody wants. So many unwanted kids are put in group homes where they stagnate more solely because their parents didn't want to try raising them. Death is better than living in prison for being unwanted.

39 comments

The community is called “no stupid questions” so I won’t say this is a stupid question, but damn if this isn’t the most ‘murican question I’ve seen.
Your question seems heavily weighted by the idea that a child is only the responsibility of the people who brought it into the world, which is completely wrong even if it is a fundamental assumption of an individualistic capitalist society like America. It’s a backwards notion to say that someone who has a right to live can have that right taken away because it’s too much of a burden to help them live; life is the exact thing that an organized society ought to be focused on protecting, otherwise what good is that society?
People say “it takes a village to raise a child” and while that is seldom followed especially in America, it is absolutely true. Raising a human being is among the hardest jobs imaginable, full stop. The abilities and needs of that child have to be considered every step of the way because it is among the most important jobs imaginable. If that child is ever treated like a burden, then something in that society has failed. It’s not just the parents’ responsibility to raise them, it is everyone’s.
Should a parent be allowed to euthanize a burden? No. 100% no. That parent needs to enlist help, and honestly help structures should be built into that society.
Lastly, the way you phrase your question is really concerning. “Parents should be able to euthanize their children, because it is better to be dead than feel like a burden.” I hope you can see that whatever convinced you that it’s better to be dead than a burden is utterly wrong. You matter, OP, for no reason other than that you exist <3
- This is why the right to abortion services is so crucial.
  
  I feel like you may have missed the point of what I’m saying. Ending the progression of human life because it’s burdensome is 100% the wrong reason.
  That being said, I agree the right to abortion services is critical and ought not to be infringed by any sort of rule that takes the decision out of the hands of the pregnant person. I just could never disagree more with the idea that abortion rights are crucial to prevent the person who would give birth from being burdened.

That's called "eugenics", and fuck no. Historically speaking, the Nazis were a huge fan of eugenics and that was their defining bad trait. Governments cannot allow their citizens to murder freely just because they don't think someone else's life is worth living.
(I know a lot of countries dabbled in eugenics around that time, but they were also morally abhorrent to do so, and I'm not a historian to go into more detail)
Since we're talking about "should", rather than the world as it exists today, parents should consider if they can care for a disabled child before they get pregnant. The government or community should have a safety net in place for those children who can't (or won't) be cared for at home, and it should be easy to access and high quality. Finally, in my opinion, it should be possible for adults to opt out of life painlessly if they so choose, once they have had a chance to experience a full life and decide it isn't for them.
I'm sorry that you've had such bad experiences, but allowing parents to kill their children legally is not the answer.
- Fun fact the Nazis learned it from Americans. They didn’t just come up with it. It was way more popular in America first.
  
  Yep, hence my comment about other countries doing it also.
  
  The sad part is - this time they’ll hail that time period as just making ‘Murica great the first time.
  We really are a shithole country at times.
- Ah yes, 'because the Nazis did it it's bad'. You should explain why it's had for its own sake. The Nazis had bad criteria, such as killing people for being ethnically Jewish or LGBT+, and didn't factor consent of the person into it. But if the person consents to dying because they recognise their life is so bad, and it's actually bad in an unfixable way, eg debilitated disability, what is morally wrong with that?
  
  Eugenics doesn't solely kill disabled people (who, by the way, were also targeted by Nazis), it's about improving humanity by removing any humans who are undesirable. If you take that first step in removing undesirable disabled people, it's an easy step to removing undesirable mentally ill people, queer people (because being gay or trans is often considered a mental illness), Jewish people, etc.
  It sounds like I'm making a slippery slope argument, and I am to a certain extent. But there's also a very famous poem about this - "First they came..."
  Consent is not usually part of eugenics programs, and the original post was talking about killing children who definitionally can't consent to such a big decision. This is why we don't let children buy houses, surgically transition gender, or have sex with adults. And I did specifically mention that painless suicide is an option that I believe a truly free society should provide - for adults.
  
  You should explain why it’s had for its own sake.
  He said "this is eugenics", which is such an extensively discussed and well documented term that the word itself is sufficient explanation of why it's bad.

Well, it certainly shifts the abortion debate...
What happens when the family farm runs low on food, or a parent loses their job?
"Well, tommy's always been a bit odd, you know what to do. Shame, he almost made it to 18".

My cousin had a kid who was basically not a person. In a wheelchair unable to communicate or feed himself, just sitting there Drooling, maybe he was in there or maybe not. I think he made it to ten or twelve.

Some societies have done this
Most modern societies frown on this today
But we have tools to detect some problems before birth, which kicks off the previous discussion about being to term a unhealthy baby
So, it's complicated, and no way are we going to arrive at consensus
NSFW - Obligatory Oglaf - https://hackertalks.com/post/5761674
Plus there is great debate amongst different societies about what a "bad diagnosis" is...

Jesus are u OK op?

Even though I was misdiagnosed, I would have benefited from being "wrongfully" euthanized than to live as the scum beneath my family's shoes, having to learn basic hygiene and just about everything else on my own (while having to hide it from family since trying to be clean and mature is funny), and being in a "school" that educated me with YouTube videos while teaching me that my comfort doesn't matter and to let anyone do whatever they want to me regardless of whether I like it or not. Fighting off a creepy stalker who copied everything I did and cornered me in the restroom made me the problem. She's not a creep, I just don't like. But letting another kid touch and try to rape me without reporting it (because why would someone care about something you Just Don't Like) also made me the problem.
To this day I just tell everyone I don't remember anything before Three Houses came out. I barely do anyway. I have no childhood memories, no family, no childhood friends, no pictures, nothing. Because while everyone else got to navigate their neighborhood and actually grow as children and teenagers, I sat on a short bus for 2 hours, in the same desk for 7 hours, then on the short bus for another 2.5 hours to go lie in bed and be out of sight like a good kid. I should have just died.
- I can't begin to understand what you have gone through. The only thing I can say is that there must be a tiny grain of hope that you can somehow live a better life in the future. Please contact the Samaritans, or equivalent in your country. Please try to get help to find a better life for yourself.
- It sounds like you've been through a lot and I'm sorry your life has been so hard. I hope you find a way to talk to someone (preferably a therapist) about your difficulties and find a way to live a good life beyond your troubles.

What about if they just have a bad vibe about them?
- Every kid is dying around.. 15 then I'd say.

In roman times your father had the absolute right to kill you if he wanted to.
You also weren't considered an adult until your father died.
- until your father died
  👀
  patricide have joined the chat
  
  If it weren't illegal, and if he wasn't dead already 🎉 then I'd do exactly that. Unfortunately his grave is in another state otherwise I'd take advantage of the new portapotty.

Idk man, kids can adapt to pretty much any condition. It’s mostly other people’s reactions that make it hard. I don’t think you make that better by saying they’re justified in their prejudices.
Edit: Crap, I didn’t realize this was about you. I stand by it though.
Heck em. I’ve known people with similarly traumatic childhoods who turned out to be amazing — quirks and all.
There’s so much more time than you realize, and Future You™ will have a very different attitude about this stuff after you get some distance from it.

Yea my kids got depression, I'm gonna get of these lazy Useless Eaters
/s
- Oh c’mon, it’s in a children’s book!
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Giftpilz
  Can’t be all that bad
  /s in case that isn’t glaringly obvious enough

CW: child abuse, abortion, sexual assault, suicidal ideation
I think if a fetus has an abnormality the parents don't want, then they can choose to abort once it is caught. But once the infant is born, the parents shouldn't be able to back out. I don't have children, I might have them one day, so I don't know if I'll ever change my mind if I end up having a kid with a serious disability that wasn't caught in time for an abortion. There are some conditions where the kid doesn't even survive childhood. That sounds really heartbreaking but I couldn't bring myself to basically kill a child.
I am physically and mentally disabled myself and it has been a struggle. I haven't had kids yet because my disability has made me permanently low income and I don't know if I have the strength and energy to raise a child. I am female so I would be carrying and birthing the baby and breastfeeding and all that jazz, unmedicated because my medication causes birth defects. There are times I want to die, I find myself drifting towards researching suicide methods. But it is my choice, it should never be anyone else's. Certainly not my asshole parents' decision.
I would like to say that if a parent wants to back out, the kid can go to a loving home in foster care. However, foster care is very bad in my area and I've heard very tragic tales from children that end up in their care. I don't know why, I don't know if it is a budgeting issue, but abusive foster parents in my area with clear mental and anger problems are allowed to foster anyway as well as typical abusive religious nutjobs. My parents were pretty abusive to me, one was the narcissistic abuser and the other was the enabler. I have PTSD from them and so do my siblings. And yet we ended up better than the foster kids I've heard from. I still would advocate for fixing the foster care system rather than killing all those children. My parents told me if I called CPS, I would be raped in foster care. It scared me enough to keep quiet about the abuse. Turns out it does happen, I know kids that went through that, and it is fucked up. I'm not saying every foster kid goes through this but I would never take that chance with my own kid. Adoption is not an option for me.

It's kind of related to the abortion discussion. I don't think the question is "should they be allowed to" but rather "when are they allowed to" I think that in some situations there's a case to be made for after-birth-abortion but I don't quite feel like "not wanting to deal with it" is a sufficient reason.

I would be conflicted about a child with infantile tay-Sachs (there are probably other similar diseases, but I don’t know them). That’s a short, excruciating life, and I would not want to live it. But the idea of someone choosing euthanasia for someone else, even someone under their care, is pretty abhorrent to me. It seems too ripe for abuse, and the right to decide to end your own life should not be transferable. The ending of it can be, but only under circumstances determined by the person (so I could tell my husband that I don’t want to keep going if I can’t recognize my children, for example, and when I reach that point, he could kill me, but he can’t decide what the line is).

Well, you run into a lot of trouble.
Part of the abortion debate is centred on when, exactly, a bunch of cells can be called a person.
There's no significant group arguing that it happens after the baby is out of the womb and surviving.
There's rules in place for what happens when that new person can't survive on its own, particularly when that's combined with an inability to ever function as more than a lump.
So, the problem becomes one of deciding when, after that period, that child needs to be given the right to choose for themselves if they want to live or not. There's already the ability to just not sustain life, but if you're gong to be making the choice to end that life, you gotta get consensus on whether or not someone gets to decide it for them.
Now, I'm a long term right to death advocate. I consider the ability to choose the manner and time of our own deaths a right, one that is typically repressed, unjustly so
But when you're taking someone else's, there's a much higher standard involved. In order to take someone's life legally, you have to jump through some serious hoops under normal circumstances. It's usually only allowed after they do something very bad (by the standards of the legal system making the decision).
So, how and why are the parents making that decision? Why are they making it alone? Why not wait until the child is older and can decide for themselves? When is someone old enough?
There's more things that need to be addressed before you could even remotely hope to build consensus and make it legal.
And, from my perspective the answer is a hell no. You, me, everyone, has the right to decide the manner and time of our death (within reason). But we do not have the right to decide it for someone else.
With that in mind, it is a decision that should only be made before adulthood in the most extreme cases, where suffering is assured, and early death inevitable.
Beyond that, there are just too many problems, the same as there are with capital punishment.
Euthanasia is a difficult topic, period. Even with the right to death, are we going to obligate someone else to assist? A lot of people seeking a medical end of life can't take their own. So they need assistance. When you're involving someone that can't decide for themselves (and if someone isn't deemed capable of voting then they're not capable of choosing in this), you can't obligate a doctor to do the job. Nobody should be obligated to take someone else's life.
So, nah. If you're an adult, you should have the right, but until then, nobody else should. It still has problems, and you listed the worst of them already. But those problems are not as bad as ending someone's life without their informed consent. Kids can't form that for much of anything.