Phil, are you using this apparent textbook content just for the sake of an argument, that no one unless they were a qualified medical doctor or studying to be one could possibly understand, or is this what is really and actually involved in moving forward with a decision to have assisted death in a right to state?
Legal decisions such as this one don't come about by having tea and crumpets one sunny afternoon, then unanimously agreeing to a new law. The crafting of such an emotionally-laden piece of legislature is, I am pretty sure, a very complex affair, and I see this list as being just a part of the decision-making process that would be carried out by a conscientious law-maker.
I don't hear you saying why you are so adamantly against an individual being able to have this as an option, other than possible mental issues and exploitation.
I am NOT against it. I am against the
government setting out laws and rules that govern my say over my
own life. My body and soul are mine - no one else has a right to tell me what to do with them.
Phil, appreciate the work but.... Why exactly is all that necessary? Isn't it all just fancy legalities promulgated by people who make a living out of their complexities?
Yes, it is, exactly, and that's the law-making process.
Why is that one decision in life so much more complex and focused upon than other equally life ending decisions we make? Like driving into walls and base jumping?
I once ran into a wall that left a big bump on my forehead that is still there to this day. I assure you there was precious little decision-making involved in the process.
I've also base-jumped (on a very small scale, in my youth) and while the pros and cons WERE weighed a bit more carefully, it was still not on the same scale as inducing my own death.
Why is that responsibility for action taken away from suffering individuals only, by people it doesn't affect in any way whatever?
Because of the need of others to exert their control.
When did a person have to prove they are sane to anybody to jump off a bridge?
They don't - unless they are unsuccessful, in which case society deems them as dangerous and "not quite right" and locks them up "for their own good".
The bus driver who dropped them off at the nearest stop isn't charged with assisting their suicide.
Technically, if he KNEW they were going to jump he could be legally involved.
The bridge builder isn't either.
It's called "professional malfeasance" - if they did not include sufficient safeguards in the design and construction then they too could be held liable.
The jump was that individual's decision and it isn't even illegal.
... and it doesn't matter what was going on in their head because it was obviously bad enough to make them jump.
First, they were probably trespassing.
Second, in this country it IS illegal to attempt suicide (with the exceptions of course of the areas being discussed here).
Third, it DOES matter what was going on in their heads, and that's why it would be important to ascertain their psychological state - because it DOES matter whether they were jumping because they had terminal cancer, or because their pet turtle just died from an overdose of those nifty little turtle-food flakes.
In the first case, most people could empathize. In the second, they might have been making an emotional, irrational decision, one from which there is usually no return and which in the eyes of most others would be a waste of the most precious gift we have.
Their decision.
We can try and talk 'em down if it makes us feel better about ourselves, but unless we can (not 'might' can) fix what ails them I don't see that we have the right to stop them by force.
And we DO have the ability to "fix" them, whether it's just a good friend talking them back down to sensibility or a course of professional therapy. Of course, this applies to the turtle-episode survivor, not the terminal cancer patient. So once again we have the need to categorize the causes of the suicide attempt, in order that we know whether or not intervention is truly warranted.
Does it come down to "oh, too weak to climb the bridge rail eh? Tough, you'll just have to lie there and suffer in agony then won't you?"
"We really sorry, we can't do a thing about the suffering, but we're quite content to sit here and pretend sympathy while we watch and discuss the finer ethical details among ourselves, because we have a really severe self preservation fear of getting into trouble with gods and lawyers over the technicality of giving you a hand to climb over the rail."
Again you're focusing on the Alpha cases, which are in reality only a minority of suicide attempts. Much more often you're going to encounter the turtle-people. Theirs is the real gray-area, not something as cut-and-dried as terminal disease cases.
When can we ever let go of trying to control everyone and everything and let people bear their own responsibilities for their decisions?
Why do we get so bloody precious about this and ignore other potentially harmful 'rights' that are killing people too?
As I mentioned previously, I believe it the desire to exert one's will over others. That's a disease that is epidemic among politicians and do-gooders.
What are we thinking? Really. Do we care about their suffering, or just about our own smug clear consciences and winning points over trivial legal intricacies? Who's benefit is all the argument really for? Them? I don't think so.
It's about what 'might' happen to someone who 'might' exist in a possible scenario in the future that 'might' be illegal or at least, gasp, unethical, and which we 'might' feel responsible, or distantly guilty for.
Like that never happens already! No one ever smothered Grandma for the inheritance? Never? Would that only happen if Voluntary Euthanasia was legalized.?
I totally agree.
We'd better not legalize bank robbing then because that won't happen without a law enacted okaying it either.
Apparently, according to the obsessively ethical, everyone is a latent bank robber, or murderer, just waiting for the nod to do it.
I've often said that the line that separates the model citizen from the true psycho is tissue-thin, and requires only the smallest of catalysts.
People won't become homicidal maniacs busily culling their relatives because a law legalizing the voluntary form of euthanasia is passed. People remain who they are and the overwhelming majority are good people trying to do the best they can for those they care for.
We don't know that for sure - we will only know it after the law is passed, by which time it will be too late and the entire law-making process will have to gear up again, wasting yet more years.
I've heard it argued that legalizing Weed is okay because people who don't want to smoke it won't take it up just because it's legal. And that most wont become addicted to it because it's not in their nature. Probably true.
The first part is true, as has been seen with alcohol and cigarettes.
The second part is false, mainly because marijuana is not an addictive substance.
Why doesn't that same theory of human nature apply to Euthansasia laws? What insidious danger lies there that doesn't lie in many laws and rights? Bad people do bad things right? Isn't that how it goes? Why are good people denied their rights because of that?
Perhaps it's because it's such an emotionally-charged issue. Birth and death are certainly the two biggest events in a person's life, so I think it only proper that due consideration and deliberation be taken before enacting laws concerning them.
I thought I was pretty cynical, but not as much as those who suspect that anguished relatives are' likely to suddenly take the notion to snuff their loved ones for their own financial or emotional gain as soon as there's a loophole that 'might let them get away with it. Wow, now that is really being cynical.
That isn't being cynical - that's being a student of human nature. Relatives have snuffed relatives for a few bucks - hell, one guy killed his own son over a turkey leg at Thanksgiving! - so I don't think it outside the realm of possibility that someone is going to bend this law to their own purposes.
The only difference between us is that you apparently believe you have some kind of tenuous control over people's behavior
with ethical laws, when I accepted long ago that we will always live with a fair ratio of arseholes among us no matter what the law is.
Get over it.
You are SO, so wrong on that ... look up "Anarchist" in the dictionary - you'll see my picture.
