8mm
Posted on 09/28/2007 5:22:51 PM PDT by wagglebee
You have no right to end your life before it naturally comes to an end. No one does. Doing so opens the door for more and more active euthanasia to patients who are less and less ill and incapacitated, until society is killing patients for any reason and/or no reason at all.
The key word is “naturally”. If I was in a decrepit state in the US, under the control of physicians who strove to extend my life with undesired care, it is not natural. I retain total control of my life in this way, and surrender it only to the judgment of trusted family in an official manner.
Were instead I to deny outsiders this opportunity by moving to a rural part of a third world nation, so that they could not control me, my death would be very “natural”, even if it could have been easily delayed by their interference.
I would, as would most people, prefer to die surrounded by family, with discomfort mitigated. But I bristle at the idea that anyone outside of my family could intervene in *either* direction, to extend *or* shorten my life, unless they did so at the behest of my family, and purely through a technical skill they could perform. They have no right to even an iota of control.
If I survive my family, then I so deeply distrust outsiders to perform my wishes that I would vie for a departure out of their grasp, again by retiring to a place where I am beyond their reach. My life or demise is not their concern.
Those with other agendas may speak of public policy, and with some legitimacy on either side. On one side are those who fear lingering debility, debasement and impoverishment; and on the other side those who note with great alarm the willingness to murder those who are helpless—already seen in such places as Britain.
Let them have their public policy debate. However, I see no transcendental goal of government in interfering with the personal decision and the wise familial decision; if they attempt it in either direction, at least I and my family will evade their dictates. Other families should do the same.
Those unfortunate enough to be caught without loving guardians or the ability to evade, do need options—the intervention of government, in a reasoned manner—something in which government does not excel. But that is for them, not for me.
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