[Mr Ramsbotham]

They are predicated on a potent individualistic delusion of isolated autonomous choice, a refusal to acknowledge the reality of our mutual interconnectedness and interdependence as human beings in society.

I think they're also predicated on the notion that a person has a property right vested in himself. I've always repudiated that notion in the belief that if a person owns himself, he has a right to sell that ownership to someone else. I think such a notion is incompatible with the ideals of freedom upon which U.S. society is based.

[nathanbedford]

Naked we come into this world and naked we will go out. We come in alone and we will die alone even if we die in the arms of our loved ones.

All of the verbiage in the world about, "mutual interconnectedness and interdependence as human beings in society" cannot alter the essential reality of our aloneness at the time we meet our maker. But what this mindless verbiage can do is cloud our thinking about the real meaning of the Declaration of Independence:

that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Declaration of Independence does not tell us that we lose the power of choice because of our "interconnectedness" or because of our "interdependence." My Declaration of Independence tells me that my creator has endowed me with the unalienable right of choice and that includes power over my life.

There is no mumbo-jumbo that can come between me and my creator over the ultimate questions of life and death.

While I would be extremely careful about how we might permit, for example, Dr. assisted suicide because of its profound implications for the doctor patient relationship, I say that the very idea that society has the power to "permit" or "withhold" the option of suicide among the mentally fit is an outrageous presumption.