History Main / WeWillHaveEuthanasiaInTheFuture

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia Euthanasia]] is at present a controversial social issue. However, in science fiction, in many futuristic societies, it is a norm, and may be encouraged. This may be done as a form of population control, to reduce the use of scarce resources, or because [[BlackComedy death is preferable]] [[CrapsackWorld to living in this future.]]

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia Euthanasia]] is at present a controversial social issue. However, in science fiction, in many futuristic societies, it is a norm, and may be encouraged. This may be done as a form of population control, to reduce the use of scarce resources, or because [[CrapsackWorld death is preferable to living in this future.]]

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia Euthanasia]] is at present a controversial social issue. However, in science fiction, in many futuristic societies, it is a norm, and may be encouraged. This may be done as a form of population control, to reduce the use of scarce resources.

* Downplayed in ''Series/TheSilentSea''. Due to a planetwide water shortage keeping pets is illegal and there's mention of the government offering "euthanasia assistance", but few pet owners are willing to take the offer.

* Also appears in ''Film/ChildrenOfMen'' (where humanity has lost the ability to reproduce, causing widespread despair as people know they are going to die out) in the form of a highly successful pharmaceutical campaign selling what are essentially suicide pills. [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic Parallels to antidepressants]] are [[{{Anvilicious}} not entirely subtle]]. Then again, it does lead to a {{tearjerker}} moment [[spoiler:as Creator/MichaelCaine euthanizes his vegetative wife when he knows that he will be performing a HeroicSacrifice to cover the escape of the protagonists]]. One dark touch is that an advertisement mentions they're offered free to illegal immigrants, who are horribly persecuted in the film.

This is generally, but not always, the sign of a {{Dystopia}}, and at the very least demonstrates the divergence between the fictional world and the actual one. A handy rule of thumb is that the consensual nature of the euthanasia presented is inversely proportional to how dystopian the society presented is supposed to be.

*** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E22HalfALife Half a Life]]", there is a society where everyone commits suicide at the age of 60. Originally to alleviate the strain of paying for keeping the elderly alive, it has become a way of honoring the individual and their family. Lwaxana Troi attempts to dissuade a man of this society from doing it, in part because they are developing feelings for each other and in part because he is perhaps the only scientist on the planet capable of stopping the planet's sun from burning out within a few decades. Ultimately, however, he goes off after being begged by his daughter (whose mother had already done so). Ultimately, while she doesn't approve of or condone his choice or the society's tradition, she decides to attend his farewell ceremony/celebration to bid farewell to the other people who love and care for him.

* In ''Literature/TheGiver'', everybody except the Receiver of Memories has the right to commit suicide whenever they want and euthanasia (which is called being "ReleasedToElsewhere") is practiced on the elderly, the smaller of identical twins, and babies that don't develop correctly, as well as on people who cause too much trouble (airplane pilots who make too many mistakes, for instance). Consent is an issue in the latter case, though, since they don't know it's euthanasia rather than exile. Due to the way this society works, even the people who perform "Release" don't fully understand what they are doing. Only the Giver and the Receiver, the only people who possess all of the knowledge the society has given up, understand that "Release" means death. [[spoiler: One chilling scene is when the main character realizes his father kills the "defective" infants]].

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia Euthanasia]] is at present a controversial social issue. However, in many futuristic societies, it is a norm, and may in fact be encouraged. This is generally, but not always, the sign of a {{Dystopia}}, and at the very least demonstrates the divergence between the fictional world and the actual one. A handy rule of thumb is that the consensual nature of the euthanasia presented is inversely proportional to how dystopian the society presented is supposed to be.

Note that, in some countries and US states, consensual euthanasia is legal under certain guidelines.

* ''Anime/GhostInTheShellSAC2045''. In "Pie in the Sky", an elderly Japanese lady wants to go to Switzerland where euthanasia is legal because, after the death of her husband, she wants to die with dignity and at a time of her own choosing. No one tries to talk her out of this, and Batou even helps her get the money she needs for the trip, but we see her at the airport apologizing to her late husband because she's decided to use the money to [[LastDance take a vacation and enjoy herself before she dies]].

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

*** In "A Taste of Armageddon" they're used in lieu of nuclear warfare; computers select those who have been 'killed' in each attack, and the victims report voluntarily to the suicide booths, thus sparing their civilization the horrors of mass destruction. Things go well until Kirk and his crew are designated dead.
*** In "The Mark of Gideon," an extremely overpopulated world is trying to set up a voluntary suicide system, starting by infecting the leader's daughter with a disease.

*** In an episode there is a society where everyone commits suicide at the age of 60. Originally to alleviate the strain of paying for keeping the elderly alive, it has become a way of honoring the individual and their family. Lwaxana Troi attempted to dissuade a man of this society from doing it, in part because they are developing feelings for each other and in part because he is perhaps the only scientist on the planet capable of stopping the planet's sun from burning out within a few decades. But he ultimately went off after he was begged by his daughter (whose mother had already done so). Ultimately, while she doesn't approve of or condone his choice or the society's tradition, she decides to attend his farewell ceremony/celebration to bid farewell to the other people who love and care for him.
*** Vulcans and Klingons both have practices where a sufficiently crippled or incapacitated individual may opt to die. Worf planned to do it in one episode after being paralyzed, and Picard argued Klingon tradition should be respected in a somewhat {{anvilicious}} way to Riker (whom Worf had asked to assist in the ritual, as direct suicide is still "dishonorable" for Klingons). Worf changed his mind in the end, partly because Riker does some investigating and discovers that it should in fact be Worf's ''son'' who assists, and Worf cannot bring himself to ask the child to do so. And partly because Picard was able to convince Dr Crusher to ''also'' respect Klingon values by authorizing an incredibly risky, experimental surgery to reverse the damage despite her belief that Worf should receive futuristic physical therapy instead (which would still leave him basically crippled).
*** Worf himself reluctantly agrees to help his brother, Kurn, with a similar rite after their family house is dissolved and Kurn feels he has literally nothing to live for without honor or status in Klingon society, with the ritual suicide as his only hope for an honorable death and afterlife. They're interrupted just as Worf plunges the knife into his brother's chest and Kurn is saved despite his desire to die. A furious Captain Sisko takes any further attempts to "help" Kurn off the table and Worf spends the rest of the episode trying to help Kurn change his mind and find a way to live honorably outside of Klingon society. For his own part, Worf comes to see killing a family member like he tried to with Kurn the same way as humans do - as murder - and as a result feels unable to go through with it again.
** While trying to cure a Dominion bioweapon in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'''s "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS04E24TheQuickening The Quickening]]", Julian Bashir clashes with a local doctor who spends much of his time providing euthanasia drugs to terminal-stage victims. [[spoiler:When Julian succeeds in developing a vaccine, the doctor leaps at the opportunity to provide that instead.]]
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''
** Tuvok mentions that Vulcan society does allow euthanasia in certain cases. It's interesting in that Vulcan is never shown to be anything resembling a dystopia, it's just that for a society that runs entirely on cold logic, killing someone who will spend the rest of their lives in misery and will never improve makes perfect sense. When the ''Voyager'' crew comes across a member of the Q Continuum who wants to commit suicide, he enlists Tuvok to help him prepare his argument in favor of it to the other Q.
** In "Emanations", Harry Kim encounters a PlanetOfHats that practises this trope, with invalids being pressured to move on to the afterlife because they are a burden to their families and medical research stifled because of this easy option. If there's another side to the issue [[TheWarOnStraw we don't hear it]].

* In ''Literature/{{Dreamsnake}}'', it's likely that [[spoiler:Jesse had a fatal aneurysm]] moments before [[spoiler:[[CoolPet Mist]] bit her]]. The fact remains that a quick death by [[spoiler:cobra bite]] was deemed preferable to what could have been a far slower and more painful one by [[spoiler:radiation poisoning]].

* ''Anime/GhostInTheShellSAC2045''. In "Pie in the Sky", an elderly Japanese lady wants to go to Switzerland where euthanasia is legal, because after the death of her husband she wants to die with dignity and at a time of her own choosing. No-one tries to talk her out of this, and Batou even helps her get the money she needs for the trip, but we see her at the airport apologizing to her late husband because she's decided to use the money to [[LastDance take a vacation and enjoy herself before she dies]].

* The first volume of ComicBook/TheBalladOfHaloJones notes that the upper levels of the Hoop contain pleasant gardens that prospective euthanasiacs can visit before dying. The protagonists use them as a shortcut, and plan to say the garden's beauty made them want to live again if they get caught.

* OlderThanTelevision: It is one of the themes of "The Repairer of Reputations", a short story by Robert Chambers which introduced ''Literature/TheKingInYellow''. The story, written in 1895, depicts society [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture twenty five years on]], where "Government Lethal Chambers" have become widespread, so that people can self-euthanize without hassle. Two years before, Scottish writer William Archer suggested that in the "Golden Age" of the future there would be "penny in the slot" machines which a person could kill themselves with. Then Creator/GKChesterton critically mentioned Archer's idea in 1908 as part of his book ''Orthodoxy''.

* Literature/TheCulture is basically a {{Utopia}} and has technology which can keep you alive and young forever, but there is kind of a thought that you should go peacefully at some point. This might entail dying of old age, but it can also be in the form of NothingLeftToDoButDie.

* ''Literature/TheTripods''. In "The City of Gold and Lead" human slaves go to booths were they can be killed painlessly once they've become too worn out to serve their Masters. Given the high gravity of the city, this only takes a few years.

* The future society in ''Literature/TheColorOfDistance'' and ''Through Alien Eyes'' is overall trying to be utopian. An alien healer visiting a hospital is asked to treat someone in such a bad shape neither human nor alien treatments can help, determines that the man has no more desire to live, and euthanizes him before berating the staff for not giving this as an option before. In his species anyone too badly wounded to heal completely kills themselves, though he comes to realize that that isn't as good a thing as he'd grown up assuming.

* ''The Hit'' by Melvin Burgess is about a drug called Death hat gives you the perfect high for a week then kills you. It was invented to give elderly dying people a happy ending but trickled into the illegal drug market.

*** In an episode there is a society where everyone commits suicide at the age of 60. Originally to alleviate the strain of paying for keeping the elderly alive, it has become a way of honoring the individual and their family. Lwaxana Troi attempted to dissuade a man of this society from doing it, in part because they are developing feelings for each other and in part because he is perhaps the only scientist on the planet capable of stopping the planet's sun from burning out within a few decades. But he ultimately went off to after he was begged by his daughter (whose mother had already done so). Ultimatley, while she doesn't approve of or condone his choice or the society's tradition, she decides to attend his farewell ceremony/celebration to bid farewell with the other people who love and care for him.

* In the ''Series/BlackMirror'' episode "[[Recap/BlackMirrorSanJunipero San Junipero]]" euthanasia of the terminally ill is legal, but in California it requires signatures from the patient, a doctor, and the next-of-kin. [[spoiler: And all shown cases have their brains uploaded to a simulated party town that they’d been allowed to visit for brief periods while still alive.]]

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' shows several ''[[ApocalypseHow planets]]'' who chose to wipe themselves out this way as part of [[spoiler: Meteon]] showing you their reasons for becoming an OmnicidalManiac. The Ea were a race of science-minded perfectionists who transcended their mortal bodies into beings of pure magic, only to discover Universal Heat Death, which horrified them so much that most of their race exsanguinated their aether (basically destroyed their magical bodies) and the ones left only stayed alive looking for a way to get their bodies back to die "properly". The Plenty meanwhile, were a {{Utopia}} species who had created a genuine paradise, with no pain, no suffering, no adversity... and no pleasure, or aspirations, or as they eventually realized, [[DespairEventHorizon reason to live]]. For that reason they created Ra-La, a Sphinx-like creature who was made specifically to provide an instant, painless death which they all embraced with open arms as her golden light vaporized them all.

*** Worf himself reluctantly agrees to help his brother, Kurn, with a similar rite after their family house is dissolved and Kurn feels he has literally nothing to live for without honor or status in Klingon society, with the ritual suicide as his only hope for an honorable death and afterlife. They're interrupted just as Worf plunges the knife into his brother's chest and Kurn is saved despite his desire to die. Worf can't bring himself to follow through on it again and spends the rest of the episode trying to help Kurn change his mind and find a way to live honorably outside of Klingon society.

[[folder:Film]]