Hacker News Reader

Sure, and a lot of freedoms or well intended legal provisions are used "maliciously." Because of the potential to misuse freedoms, should we not have them at all?

This is a freedom for which many, including myself, may eventually benefit versus the alternative. I may want to make such a choice for myself (hopefully many years into the future!) rather than live in agony and I really hope the option will at least be there for me in my country.

View on HN

Well there are certainly many freedoms that we restrict or completely deny just because of the potential to misuse them (e.g. freedom to own a gun).

I don't think this is the case though, and I agree with all of your second paragraph. But I do think (and it seems that) potential to misuse a freedom is sometimes enough to restrict it, even completely.

This is a good point - we can't be scared of everything on the basis it might be misused.

The challenge is to have proper regulation, with the right checks and balances in place - I don't think anyone is suggesting you can just rock up to your local euthanasia corner-shop and say "can I haz dead pls?".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com