RoR: Forum

Nice piece Tibor!

You've eloquently expressed the thoughts of just about everyone I've discussed this with.

Thanks!

Ed

Post 2

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 6:37am

And then they need to submit all of this to the U.S. Supreme Court, which should long ago have stated very simply: "Leave these folks alone, it is their life, so let them decide about it!"

Instead, we have the ugly spectacle of free adult men and women going around in circles, begging for permission from all kinds of strangers, to do what is clearly their unalienable right to do.

It is manifestly simple. A child could understand it. Confusion on this issue is incomprehensible.

Post 3

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 7:00am

Tibor, another fine and articulate article I have sanctioned. I have noticed, peculiarly, a Christian preoccupation with outlawing assisted suicide. A Christian carpool rider years ago expressed fear that the "right to die" would evolve into a "duty to die." In other words, repealing laws against assisted suicide would lead to familial and societal pressures on "useless eaters" to terminate their lives prematurely. I understand his apprehension but disagree that this risk warrants outlawing assisted suicide.

Have others heard this objection used?

My counter-argument is simply that with great liberty of self comes great responsibility for self, including the responsibility to exercise one's own independent will against outside social pressures. Of course, attempting to reason with those who build their lives on faith seems a lost cause.

Post 4

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 3:51pm

heaven help Iraq if it gets the kind of legal system under which Americans live today.

Amen, Tibor. Thank you for another wonderful article.

Post 5

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 5:04pm

Seems fishy to say that anybody and everybody should have the legal rights to buy and sell and consume and produce injectable liquid pentobarbital (the deadly assisted suicide drug), much less have those legal rights under the Ninth.

But if it's not the case that anybody and everybody should have those legal rights, then perhaps the government should intervene. If the government should intervene, the questions then become what kind or how much intervention, and which government should be the one to intervene. To be sure, these are basically the questions before the Supreme Court in the assisted suicide case.

Jordan

Post 6

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 5:34pm

Well, we are certainly not stopped from buying Draino and Plunge and thousands of other very hazardous products, which we could all easily abuse. I think in a free society a more efficient system of warnings would emerge about all of this.

Post 7

Thursday, October 6, 2005 - 5:44pm

An actual Oregonian here.

I voted for the assisted suicide measure both times it was on our ballot. The first time, it made the ballot because of the initiative and referendum process. Well-meaning citizens wanted to create a legal process to help the terminally ill, so that doctors and patients would both be protected from prosecution. They circulated petitions and got thousands and thousands of signatures to put it on the ballot. It passed, but it was very close - something like 52%-48%.

This law definitely didn't come from the legislature! In fact, the legislature wanted us to repeal it a year or two later (after the first bit of pressure from the feds), but Oregon voters backed the law by an even greater margin than before. In the second election, I think the margin was 61%-39%.

While I am intellectually sympatico with the arguments posted above that it should be none of the government's business, I'll accept the assisted suicide law for now as a slight sideways step ahead towards personal freedom. Yeah, there's now a government process I would have to follow if I were terminally ill, but at least now if my doctor helps me die, he won't be prosecuted for murder.

Post 8

Friday, October 7, 2005 - 12:23am

In a welfare state in which we work for the enforcers of the 'common good' 40% of our workday, we can't 'quit' unless management (the state) approves -- hence no suicide.

On the other hand, perhaps the state should calculate the savings to our social security system if suicide were legal.

;-)

Post 9

Friday, October 7, 2005 - 9:50am

Luke,

I, too, have heard that the right to choose your death will devolve into the duty to die (I was raised a catholic, but outgrew it :) ).

I have not heard any underlying argument to that conclusion, but it is hard to picture the equivalent happening in any other areas of medicine (for example, the right to choose cosmetic surgery will lead to the duty to get it?). And I see the right to die as a valid, elective medical treatment. Relief of pain is and suffering is part of proper medical care, even when the underlying condition is untreatable and incurable.

I write this as a twenty year resident of Oregon, which, with all its evident flaws, still gives me a stronger protection than most U.S. states of my rights to free speech, self defense, and choosing the time and manner of my death when appropriate. The 9% state income tax is a matter better left for another topic ...

Regards,
Paul

Post 10

Saturday, October 8, 2005 - 2:28pm

The connection between establishing a Right to Suicide and the expectation this might turn into an obligation to end one's life comes from an economic premise: that your younger relatives will inherit the balance of your property and if you spend it instead on a few more years of life, perhaps living in pain, your relatives will be worse off.

Where this question becomes very serious is in situations of a welfare state, where it may not be your own relatives but the general taxpayers who will continue to support your pain-wracked body, long after you have ceased to be a productive member of the social collective.

Did you all see episode 96 of "Star Trek, the Next Generation"? David Ogden Stiers plays "Dr. Timicin," who is about to discover a method to save his planet and civilization, but instead he has to comply with a custom/law on his planet to report to the suicide center upon reaching age 65. This is a challenging dramatization of these issues, as regards how we as individuals might "voluntarily" submit to suicide out of consideration for passing more wealth along to our loved ones.

Even short of a "duty to die," as portrayed in the Star Trek story, there would be powerful motives arising in the mind of the terminally ill person to hasten the process if the choice is (1) to enrich the hospital, or (2) to enrich your own children.

I have thought that excitement ought to be an option for ending life. Maybe somebody should offer sky diving opportunities for very ill people, with manually pulled rip cords on parachutes. I wonder what law would regulate that?

Post 11

Saturday, October 8, 2005 - 5:57pm

Because government is involved in health care, I am concerned about a slippery slope to be persuaded to die. No government isn't going to kill people but I can see a situiation where the goverment would put to the forefront that option to the terminally ill.

If government gets out of health care, fine allow doctors to kill you (there is no way in hell I would choose that). Until then though; jump off a bridge, OD yourself, walk (or roll) in front of a train, or get Mr's Smith & Wessen to kill you.

"Soylent Green is people!"

Post 12

Saturday, October 8, 2005 - 7:50pm