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In some countries it is.
Including the U.S.
The answer OP is looking for is: if you make it easy to kill people in pain you make it easier to kill people who aren't. This is true for any animal including dogs our law just cares about their lives less.
Another answer OP is looking for and probably doesn't want to hear: most people value human life more than non-human life.
Bad example. In the US it's super cool to deny care for dollars. Illness and death are built into the system from for profit hospitals to health insurance and pharma pricing.
Edit: Downvote all you like, but Luigi isn't a folk hero without reason.
Killing people is not the same as letting them die of natural causes.
Capitalist exploitation is a natural cause? That's a wild take.
Next time, try it without the "Appeal to Nature" / Naturalistic Fallacy.
But technically humans are part of nature!
Lol, how absurd.
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Countries that have assisted dying do not make it "easy". Especially when someone isn't physically ill, they throw every type of therapy and help at them to persuade them not to kill themselves.
Didn't say they did. Just "easier"
You cannot put a person down for being sick. Even in countries where euthanasia is allowed, the person has to ask for it, under formal circumstances following formal rules.
That's totally besides the point. The reason humans get to say when a pet should be euthanized is just because animals aren't capable of deciding it and communicating it.
Nope, not when a perfectly healthy happy good dog is put down because the owner find it best, or when an animal shelter put down animals they can't find homes for, or when a Zoo put down young animals, because their cuteness has been expended, and the zoo doesn't want more grown animals.
In all these cases there is absolutely no reason to think the animal wants to die. So it is not about communication, it's because an animal is a thing you can own and do with what you want, as long as it isn't too cruel.
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It's actually way worse, because you can have a dog put down that is perfectly healthy, even when other people want to adopt the dog.
If you have a dog you literally own it, and the only regulation that protects the dog are rules against animal cruelty.
You cannot own a human being.
You cannot own a human being.
Anymore. Humans can be amazing and very cruel.
But yes, ask a veterinarian and they will tell you sadly why.
Unless this was a case of USA defaultism, slavery still exists. In fact there's more slaves today than ever before. 50 million slaves last I checked. Mostly because overall human population has obviously increased drastically too but I digress.
Also USA constitution exempts prisoners so still okay in a limited capacity.
Privatized prisons are slavery too, you're right.
Depends I guess if you view UNICOR as private or not since it's government owned. We call them crown corporations in Canada.
State-run prisons where labor can be required would also qualify as slavery by any definition.
Not here in Germany. You won't find a vet who will kill a healthy animal. Kill shelters are also not a thing. Ditto the UK.
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My stepfather made use of Oregon's Death With Dignity law. Him scheduling his death a week out was... weird, but I'm always glad it was an option.
Though at one point a doc did legally have to inform him that instead of the painless and easy medical assisted death he could instead choose to stop eating or drinking.
God this is a weird thread.
How come human laws don't apply to animals?
Sorry to break it to you kids but billions of people all over the world literally eat animals every day.
Barbaric ? Perhaps, but it's fair to assume that 100% of your ancestors in the last 100,000 years have delighted in this activity as often as possible.
You may not wish to acknowledge this but the reality is: your beloved dog or cat is a lesser being, assigned very few rights.
Obviously if you have a pet dog then you treat that dog differently as you would a chicken living in a cage in a shed with 10,000 other chickens in cages but that dog's right to life is merely an extension of your rights as that dog's owner.
One other point that I think no one has mentioned yet is the importance of informed consent when treating people with otherwise fatal conditions. Surgery and other treatments e.g. chemotherapy for cancer incur a lot of pain and suffering in those going through it as well. A person can understand that all that suffering is for the greater good of extending their life, but for a pet that is far from the case, and they may in fact need to suffer more than if they weren't treated.
I love my dog with my whole heart, but I would never put her through chemo if she had cancer.
Because humans apply higher standards to themselves then they do to other animals.
Humans should be allowed to be put out of their misery as well
Some countries allow it. The major difference is that other people cannot choose for you. Your family can't "put you down" but you can choose to have a doctor assist.
And shouldn’t need to be terminally ill or old.
If I wanna peace out (humanely) at any age past adulthood, I should be able to.
I agree in theory, but often the desire to end one's life is often symptom of a treatable disease, or short term situation. Less than 10 percent of people who survive a suicide attempt, latter try again and succeed. There would need to be a lot of safety net in place, just like there is for the terminal.
Honestly I think it could save people. Knowing there is a way out, so to speak, could prevent people from attempts on their own. Not to mention it would prevent traumatizing whoever finds a successful suicide. Needing proof that other treatments are inactive would get even more the help they need.
I can see where you’re potentially coming from.
But I don’t think you comprehend how violent an act of suicide is in almost all cases.
It takes an insane level of commitment to go through with that the first time, more so for the subsequent attempts.
Also of the people who really aim to end it, succeed on the first try.
I don’t know about you, but if given the choice, I probably wouldn’t be here. There’s nothing particularly wrong with me physically, I just don’t want to be here.
Been the case over a decade ago. Pretty much back as long as I can remember. Still the case today.
I do agree with the point that a humane way out will probably have a net positive impact in almost all cases. Especially if it comes with “here’s a list of things you should consider doing to lessen the impact on your family and significant other” or something of the sort. Needless to say, but should be entirely optional.
I don’t think I agree with the “other treatments” mentality though. That just sounds like what the Americans are doing with their abortion clinics trying to emotionally blackmail people into not aborting their child by forcing you to listen to heartbeats and look at ultrasounds.
Found Kristi Noem's account
- Pets are not intellectually capable of communicating their feelings or desires to humans, so it is up to us as humans to assess the quality of life of our animals in order to prevent them from needless suffering. There is nothing wrong with trying to treat animal illnesses, if you have the resources to do so and can make sure that the animal is maintaining a good quality of life--but that's sadly not always the case. We love our pets and we all want them to live happily forever after, but the sad truth is that they will eventually get old and sick and (unless they die suddenly) one of the most important acts of compassion that we owe them is giving them a humane end of life without suffering. It is sad. It breaks our fucking hearts. But it is our duty and our responsibility to them, and in a strange way, it is an act of love. We owe it to our pets to take care of them in life and in death.
- Unlike pets, human beings are typically thought to have agency and the ability to express their own wishes regarding their end of life. We can't really decide that "ok, grandma is lives enough, time to put her down", because even if we can see that her quality of life has degraded, we understand that it is not our decision to make whether she can continue to try to live.
- In some parts of the world, human beings do have the right to choose when to end their own life via physician-assisted suicide, especially in cases where they have some terminal prognosis where they know that their quality of life will not stay high if they continue to live. I don't envy being put in this position, and it's terribly sad to think about, but I do think that it's ethically the right thing to do to allow for that.
This is apparently an insane hot take, but personally, I don't think it's okay.
It's okay to treat your dog as family and to reject the concept of "it's okay to kill him if he's in enough pain!", same as they would never even think of suggesting doing that to a human.
-- Frost
My cat suddenly became paralysed last year. What should I have done?
People downvote but don't read the name of the community the post is coming from.
Ibfind it ironic that to put an animal out of it's misery is called being "humane" though to do it to another person is called "homicide".
Well it's the definition of homicide, which is just death caused by another person.
It depends on the state, actually. Some states allow that.
Society does not value animal lives as much as human lives. You're free to draw your personal line elsewhere.
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this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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