you can sign a contract to allow me to bludgeon you to death, but it's still murder regardless of your consent
I agree this is the current law. But I certainly don't agree with this law. Do you?
I feel people should absolutely be allowed to consent to death, or potential death. And I mean, we already can in various other contexts like skiing in avalanche terrain, ordering too many big macs, or medically assisted suicide to prevent suffering from incurable conditions (at least in a few civilized places).
You're talking to someone whose wife died 4 months ago (at 34 years old), from one of those incurable conditions. I'll let you guess how I feel about allowing people to end their life on their terms.
I'm confident you strongly support allowing it as I have never met someone who witnessed a loved one suffer like that and does not support lessening their suffering.
So since you support allowing people to end their own lives in that context, you understand that people can indeed consent to death. So perhaps consenting to death should be permitted in other contexts too. That's the only point I was making.
They absolutely should be allowed to consent to ending their life. But you took my "bludgeoning to death" seriously and far out of context.
If we're being equally pedantic now, even if we allow people the right to end their life, I'd imagine asking someone to bludgeon you to death would still not be allowed.
The same way we assure people consenting to anything at all are not being forced to. We try our best basically. And sometimes we'll probably get it wrong and need to improve. I'm completely ok with that when the alternative is guaranteed preventable suffering. Just like I'm ok with people using power of attorney to protect the finances of people with dementia, even if sometimes it gets misapplied.