“...making it the default decision is immoral.”
Yes, and it leaves open to the doctors who may attend you when you are seriously injured or in a “life in the balance situation,” and decide that they think they have a better use for your parts.
We just had news from the husband of one of our dear friends who was being told by a team of doctors, save one, that his wife’s heart was inoperable and she should just be moved to a hospice and left to die. That lone doctor, interestingly an Indian. told the family that he was optimistic that she could survive the necessary open-heart surgery and that they should at least try to save her. She’s now about a week out of having a heart valve replacement and she’s doing fine. My point is that a lot of liberal doctors today seem to have the idea that “you’ve lived long enough, it’s time to harvest whatever bits and pieces that remains of you that are of any value and plug them into someone with a better prognosis.”
More illiberal than liberal. The classical liberals of old would frown at such flippant philosophy.
It seems amazing to us when an Indian believes more firmly in the positive consequences of attempting to do good to the weak and helpless than a Westerner does.
But that’s because, while Indians have kept their ideas about karma, we Westerners have so badly forgotten about Christ.
You said it well, and I agree.