Pro-choice?
Should people be allowed to sell their kidneys?
Let's say you are really healthy and a friend of yours is really unhealthy. You are inclined to help your friend, but really can't afford to take the time off of work and - honestly - want a little sumpthin sumpthin for your effort. You hear that other people get $10,000 in other countries for a good kidney. Why shouldn't you be allowed to sell your kidney?
Millions of people die for lack of a kidney. There just aren't enough cadavers or good samaritans to meet the demand (which is ever rising because diabesity damages kidneys the way smoking damages lungs.) Hey, and while we're at it, why not sell part of your lung? It's your body, shouldn't you get to decide what you do with it?
The problem with this position is that it doesn't take a lot of cognitive ability to realize that people will be put into positions of unacceptable duress. "Well, you could always sell a kidney" becomes emergency money. And I told you what happens when someone from a poor family tries to save to escape poverty, right? Their drug-addicted relative steals it. So now you end up having to sell your kidney to pay off his drug debts or the mob will kill him. That isn't even much of an exaggeration (although a little one.) But having the option in a world where you are otherwise optionless means you have that much further to go before you hit bottom. There's a level of compulsion introduced on the most vulnerable in our society that isn't acceptable.
That's how I feel about assisted suicide. I believe in personal choice to determine what happens to our bodies. I certainly believe in compassionate end to suffering. But it breaks down in two different directions when I go to pass a law allowing it. I believe it creates a level of compulsion that people aren't acknowledging. "Sure, we can give you many thousands of dollars of services in your final months, your children won't mind either watching you suffer for months OR losing their college fund, absolutely, choose life!" Yeah, right. A loving aged person, understanding that they've become a burden to the ones they love will absolutely have to face this choice now, a choice that wasn't THERE before. Or rather, the choice was in the inverse, "I can commit suicide instead of go through this" was an unacceptable option, but usually actually present. But when it becomes an optional medical procedure? Really how can this NOT become the "sensible responsible" choice in our overburdened medical system?
When Ela was dying some bastard came onto my journal and berated me for not putting her down. At that point Ela was sick, and she was frequently uncomfortable (although we were staying on top of her comfort needs for the most part) and her life had VALUE. Both to her, to us, to the puppy who loved and needed her, and I daresay to whatever God breathed life into her in the first place. I didn't want to medicalize her death. I wanted her to breath her last with me lying on the floor next to her petting her. I held a kitten as it died once, just breathed out and didn't breath in again and was gone. Death is SOMETHING IMPORTANT and I don't entirely understand it, but that ruach leaves just as mysteriously as it arrived. But read that comment again. My *not* choosing to kill her I was being evil. That's how people look at it.
I did end up putting Ela down. She had a hard night one night and was having a miserable day and I could tell that we'd reached that point where there was no more joy to be had; it was going to be pure misery from here on out. I had a lot of peer pressure to do it, too. Friends told me they thought it was wrong to let her suffer. My flist was full of stories of pets they'd put down. My vet pointed out that we'd have to request a housecall on Friday if we wanted one because they weren't working Saturday, Sunday or Monday because of a holiday. It was convenient to schedule her death; we called Eldest Son home from college and B. got off work a bit early and we all gathered at her side and spent half an hour petting and loving her before the vet arrived at our house.
But when the vet inserted the needle things got strange. She didn't exhale and die, she simply snuffed out. Gone instantly. (The vet murmured that she was really ready to go, which I agree with; she most likely would have died on her own within a day or two.) But compared to that kitten dying it felt WRONG. She wasn't "put to sleep", she was extinguished. I doubt she minded losing those last few hours of misery, but I honestly feel she was gypped somehow. It was her life, and life has both pain and joy in it. Perhaps the pain is like teenage insufferability, meant to ease the transition; teenagers have to be willing to leave the comfort of their home and it behooves them to think their parents are ogres to motivate them. Or, for that matter, the annoyance of the nine month of pregnancy. A baby born at 36 weeks is perfectly fine, that ninth month just seems to be designed to motivate the woman to be willing to go through labor. "Yes, I'll do ANYTHING to get this fetus OUT OF ME!"
So when we say that people should have the choice for assisted suicide, aren't we saying that it's okay to snuff out lives at our convenience? Doesn't this then follow the euthanizing pet model so now we're okay with this being the social norm? That now people who abstain from medicalizing a death are selfish monsters who are okay with allowing suffering? This includes the dying person, by the way; they are selfishly grasping for those last hours at great expense and inconvenience to their caregivers, and just think how awful it is to plan a funeral when you don't know when the person will finally die! People need to buy plane tickets, you know!
bill_sheehan says this isn't a slippery slope. I agree. It's a whole new level. A natural consequences of our world where we think it's awful if you don't feel fantastic, where people eat a "steak tastes better" pill to make steak taste better. It makes sense to allow people freedom of choice about their own lives.
But I think I'm voting "no" on this one.
Let's say you are really healthy and a friend of yours is really unhealthy. You are inclined to help your friend, but really can't afford to take the time off of work and - honestly - want a little sumpthin sumpthin for your effort. You hear that other people get $10,000 in other countries for a good kidney. Why shouldn't you be allowed to sell your kidney?
Millions of people die for lack of a kidney. There just aren't enough cadavers or good samaritans to meet the demand (which is ever rising because diabesity damages kidneys the way smoking damages lungs.) Hey, and while we're at it, why not sell part of your lung? It's your body, shouldn't you get to decide what you do with it?
The problem with this position is that it doesn't take a lot of cognitive ability to realize that people will be put into positions of unacceptable duress. "Well, you could always sell a kidney" becomes emergency money. And I told you what happens when someone from a poor family tries to save to escape poverty, right? Their drug-addicted relative steals it. So now you end up having to sell your kidney to pay off his drug debts or the mob will kill him. That isn't even much of an exaggeration (although a little one.) But having the option in a world where you are otherwise optionless means you have that much further to go before you hit bottom. There's a level of compulsion introduced on the most vulnerable in our society that isn't acceptable.
That's how I feel about assisted suicide. I believe in personal choice to determine what happens to our bodies. I certainly believe in compassionate end to suffering. But it breaks down in two different directions when I go to pass a law allowing it. I believe it creates a level of compulsion that people aren't acknowledging. "Sure, we can give you many thousands of dollars of services in your final months, your children won't mind either watching you suffer for months OR losing their college fund, absolutely, choose life!" Yeah, right. A loving aged person, understanding that they've become a burden to the ones they love will absolutely have to face this choice now, a choice that wasn't THERE before. Or rather, the choice was in the inverse, "I can commit suicide instead of go through this" was an unacceptable option, but usually actually present. But when it becomes an optional medical procedure? Really how can this NOT become the "sensible responsible" choice in our overburdened medical system?
When Ela was dying some bastard came onto my journal and berated me for not putting her down. At that point Ela was sick, and she was frequently uncomfortable (although we were staying on top of her comfort needs for the most part) and her life had VALUE. Both to her, to us, to the puppy who loved and needed her, and I daresay to whatever God breathed life into her in the first place. I didn't want to medicalize her death. I wanted her to breath her last with me lying on the floor next to her petting her. I held a kitten as it died once, just breathed out and didn't breath in again and was gone. Death is SOMETHING IMPORTANT and I don't entirely understand it, but that ruach leaves just as mysteriously as it arrived. But read that comment again. My *not* choosing to kill her I was being evil. That's how people look at it.
I did end up putting Ela down. She had a hard night one night and was having a miserable day and I could tell that we'd reached that point where there was no more joy to be had; it was going to be pure misery from here on out. I had a lot of peer pressure to do it, too. Friends told me they thought it was wrong to let her suffer. My flist was full of stories of pets they'd put down. My vet pointed out that we'd have to request a housecall on Friday if we wanted one because they weren't working Saturday, Sunday or Monday because of a holiday. It was convenient to schedule her death; we called Eldest Son home from college and B. got off work a bit early and we all gathered at her side and spent half an hour petting and loving her before the vet arrived at our house.
But when the vet inserted the needle things got strange. She didn't exhale and die, she simply snuffed out. Gone instantly. (The vet murmured that she was really ready to go, which I agree with; she most likely would have died on her own within a day or two.) But compared to that kitten dying it felt WRONG. She wasn't "put to sleep", she was extinguished. I doubt she minded losing those last few hours of misery, but I honestly feel she was gypped somehow. It was her life, and life has both pain and joy in it. Perhaps the pain is like teenage insufferability, meant to ease the transition; teenagers have to be willing to leave the comfort of their home and it behooves them to think their parents are ogres to motivate them. Or, for that matter, the annoyance of the nine month of pregnancy. A baby born at 36 weeks is perfectly fine, that ninth month just seems to be designed to motivate the woman to be willing to go through labor. "Yes, I'll do ANYTHING to get this fetus OUT OF ME!"
So when we say that people should have the choice for assisted suicide, aren't we saying that it's okay to snuff out lives at our convenience? Doesn't this then follow the euthanizing pet model so now we're okay with this being the social norm? That now people who abstain from medicalizing a death are selfish monsters who are okay with allowing suffering? This includes the dying person, by the way; they are selfishly grasping for those last hours at great expense and inconvenience to their caregivers, and just think how awful it is to plan a funeral when you don't know when the person will finally die! People need to buy plane tickets, you know!
bill_sheehan says this isn't a slippery slope. I agree. It's a whole new level. A natural consequences of our world where we think it's awful if you don't feel fantastic, where people eat a "steak tastes better" pill to make steak taste better. It makes sense to allow people freedom of choice about their own lives.
But I think I'm voting "no" on this one.