Pro-choice?

[gwendally]

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

Comments

[bill_sheehan]

"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? "

Nope, we're very, very far from that. Read the full text. Where in that text do you see any hint of compulsion?

It is a simple matter of personal choice at the end of life. I, for one, want to have that choice. As has been found in Oregon and Washington, many who avail themselves of the choice never use it. They just like knowing they have it.

You're welcome to your own choice. I object to you making mine.

[gwendally]

You will absolutely be under duress when it comes time to make this decision. Your needs will never be the only ones being factored in. I am asserting that the level of compulsion we are bringing to bear on people - having to affirmatively decide NOT to make it easy on everyone - is unacceptable to me.

[bill_sheehan]

As you wish. You don't seem to have a very high opinion of your loved ones. I'm afraid that mine will insist on keeping me alive far beyond my expiration date.

[ford_prefect42]

The scenario she's describing will come to pass. It will come to be "normal", just like it is with dogs today, and it will come to be considered in a lot of circumstances wrong to *not* euthanize people. Not immediately, but it will happen. "It", being the societal change, in many cases for the worse that people fear when new things come along takes a few generations, but it always does happen. Sometimes, it brings change for the good as well. Sometimes not.

[ford_prefect42]

I can see no valid moral grounds for the prevention of people from taking the consequences of their own decisions. Yes, all the negative circumstances you described may, and will take place, but let's look seriously at the alternatives

[gwendally]

I understand that the patient is the one making the decision, but I am asserting that the patient will feel undo compulsion.

[ford_prefect42]

And that gives you the moral right to compell everyone?

[gwendally]

I am called on to vote on what sort of society I wish to live in. One where people feel compelled to submit to a tidy and early death doesn't strike me as the direction I wish to go.

[ford_prefect42]

For the record, *all* slippery slopes happen. When someone argues that a slippery slope does not exist, and another argues that it does, I accept that it *does*, and look at which option is worse, the *bottom* of the slippery slope, or the present circumstance.

In this case, where the bottom of the assisted suicide slope is that some people will be euthanized like pets, and we have a facility like "home", or the "suicide booth" from futurama, I still consider the option of preventing the most fundamental exercise of free will, and the moral atrocity that is exercising that option to be by far the worse evil.

Rule 1, I belong to me. You belong to you. Violate that, and there is no room left for any form of liberty. That's where *that* slippery slope ends.

[billijean]

You know the jokes and urban legend stories about people being forced to sell body parts (as you described) to pay off debts? It happens in India. These are the same people who are forced to sell their children into indentured labour contracts, and there are a shockingly high number of people in this situation across the world. It's like the lifeboat dilemma.

How much difference would fully-funded health care make, do you think?

[jsl32]

funded with what money? and what the heck does that phrase even mean?

and when did people get all obsessed with 'health care'? 15 years ago i don't remember anyone american giving a crap about 'health care reform' and now they are obsessed with health care as some kind of grail that grants your heart's every desire.

[billijean]

Being Canadian, I am not obsessed with funded healthcare, I just go along, happily benefitting from it and being grateful for it. I don't understand American aversion to it.

[jsl32]

americans don't have an aversion to funded health care. more americans have it at higher quality than canadians, after all. canada is in debt, same as every other country (including the usa, which has plenty of government-run health care, contrary to the mythmaking that we are somalia with white people on the health care thing). your health care is hardly 'funded' since the tax burden is not actually enough to cover it and as for benefiting from it, that's meaningless if you are healthy, as you don't need health care. and if you are not, well, my experience is that america offers much more for a broader range of not-healthy people than canada can

[crazyburro]

I too will be voting against this one, not because I disagree with the right to die because I consider the law too flawed to vote for.

Specifically:
1. Only one witness need not obviously benefit from the death. So dishonorable son Bob goes and finds his best drinking buddy to help him out. This is wholly inadequate - this is one of those areas where I believe we need the judiciary involved. Yes, more government. Yes, judges, or their minions, may have to make bed-side calls. This should not be witnessable by friends, family, etc.

2. An employer can sanction a medical care provider in their employ who participates. As such the immunities section seems weak.

3. And a less substantial issue: forecasts of the lethality of disease "within 6 months" are inaccurate, at best. Within a few weeks might be better.

[froggoddess]

I'm voting no on 2 & 3 for similar reasons -- I'm ok with assisted suicide & pot, but not the ways these laws are written. I'm not convinced the legislature will be able to clean them up enough if they pass, and consider them poor policy as-is.

ETA: I also haven't settled fully in my mind how I feel about people voting about medicine in general... I keep thinking about West Virginia and trans-vaginal ultra sounds and that really, shouldn't this all be the province of the FDA or other regulatory agencies. Y'know, the ones who actually understand medicine and what is/isn't necessary & appropriate?

[ford_prefect42]

While voting on medical issues is inherently flawed, regulating by fiat is inherently much much worse. Who are you *really* willing to give that power to

[crazyburro]

The FDA has no constitutional jurisdiction on medical care as practiced within the states - only when that care somehow crosses state boundaries - e.g. drugs sold by one company in one state to someone in another.

Reality is something different because we've contorted the Commerce Clause.

But I don't really consider it appropriate for the states to regulate that a trans-vaginal ultrasound is required, either.