I believe that your principles might well convince you that you should persuade me that my life has value. However, if those principles lead you to reject my right to self-determination, then it is a rejection of my identity and is unjust.
To whom do you extend the right to self-determination when in comes to suicide? It is current practice to allow (and in some cases, require) involuntary hospitalization of suicidal people for psychiatric treatment. Do you oppose those laws, in favor of a universal "right to die?" Or do you support the right to suicide only in cases of terminal illness and/or severe disability?
Also: if you go down into the basement and shoot yourself in the head without involving or warning anyone, I suppose you might argue that this is no one's business but your own. (Your family and friends would probably disagree.)
Proponents of assisted suicide aren't arguing for their right to do that. They're arguing for the right to have socially sanctioned, medically supported suicide. They're arguing that although some suicides may be irrational, others are not. That puts society into the position of judging which is which. The only real way to do so is for some outside person or group to decide whether there is indeed no possible value to the suicidal person's future life.
As a member of the society involved, I absolutely have a say in whether we should be sanctioning some suicides. By asking for social approval, assisted suicide proponents have officially made it my business.
Conversely, I think that the belief that the greatest priority of one's life should be to preserve one's life is no less an error. [..] For myself, I'd rather spend my estate endowing a college scholarship than paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend my life beyond my body's natural ability to live.
This is a false dichotomy. The choice isn't between, on the one hand, being compelled to pursue every possible medical intervention no matter how painful and futile, or on the other hand, demanding a suicide pill from your doctor. Every person has the right to refuse medical treatment. Every person has the right to decide at which point to allow nature to take its course. There is no positive duty to accept potentially curative medical treatment.
If you are terminally ill and you decide at some point that you aren't going to go into the hospital anymore, and you choose to receive symptom-relieving treatments and pain control at home until such time that you die at home, I fully support that.
If you are terminally ill and you decide that you want some hospital committee to make an official determination that the rest of your natural life wouldn't be worth anything anyway, such that a doctor should be given the all-clear to violate the Hippocratic Oath and kill you while everyone else is forced to stand by and do nothing, then you and I are going to have a fight.
no subject
To whom do you extend the right to self-determination when in comes to suicide? It is current practice to allow (and in some cases, require) involuntary hospitalization of suicidal people for psychiatric treatment. Do you oppose those laws, in favor of a universal "right to die?" Or do you support the right to suicide only in cases of terminal illness and/or severe disability?
Also: if you go down into the basement and shoot yourself in the head without involving or warning anyone, I suppose you might argue that this is no one's business but your own. (Your family and friends would probably disagree.)
Proponents of assisted suicide aren't arguing for their right to do that. They're arguing for the right to have socially sanctioned, medically supported suicide. They're arguing that although some suicides may be irrational, others are not. That puts society into the position of judging which is which. The only real way to do so is for some outside person or group to decide whether there is indeed no possible value to the suicidal person's future life.
As a member of the society involved, I absolutely have a say in whether we should be sanctioning some suicides. By asking for social approval, assisted suicide proponents have officially made it my business.
Conversely, I think that the belief that the greatest priority of one's life should be to preserve one's life is no less an error. [..] For myself, I'd rather spend my estate endowing a college scholarship than paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend my life beyond my body's natural ability to live.
This is a false dichotomy. The choice isn't between, on the one hand, being compelled to pursue every possible medical intervention no matter how painful and futile, or on the other hand, demanding a suicide pill from your doctor. Every person has the right to refuse medical treatment. Every person has the right to decide at which point to allow nature to take its course. There is no positive duty to accept potentially curative medical treatment.
If you are terminally ill and you decide at some point that you aren't going to go into the hospital anymore, and you choose to receive symptom-relieving treatments and pain control at home until such time that you die at home, I fully support that.
If you are terminally ill and you decide that you want some hospital committee to make an official determination that the rest of your natural life wouldn't be worth anything anyway, such that a doctor should be given the all-clear to violate the Hippocratic Oath and kill you while everyone else is forced to stand by and do nothing, then you and I are going to have a fight.