Why the ‘Right to Die’ Will Always Be Controversial

Holly Whitman

Holly Whitman is a writer and journalist based in Washington DC. She loves to share her thoughts on the intersection of politics and culture, and writes on everything from feminism and human rights to climate change and technology.

Related Post Roulette

117 Responses

  1. Damon says:

    The right to die is grouped under the broader concept that “it’s my body and I can do with it what I want”. Sell a kidney, sell a lung, have an abortion, take my own life. It’s MINE. “You” as in gov’t, the group, society, the state, in the US, has no authority to tell me what I can do with it, as they are my servants, not the other way around. Sadly most people believe that using these elements to force other people into doing “what’s best for them” is all to common, and revolting.

    Obviously there needs to be some safeguards for individuals wanting to die; sound mind, no coercion, etc. As to the religious aspects, that’s between the individual and their own god, and maybe their church, and isn’t my call, nor none of my business, nor anyone else who doesn’t have a personal state in the matter.

    Nice post Holly.Report

    • notme in reply to Damon says:

      The gov’t can force you to buy health insurance so why not make you do other stuff as well?Report

      • Burt Likko in reply to notme says:

        Governments have been telling people what to do with their money for a long time, ours included. Pay this tax. Don’t buy this product. Don’t sell this product to this person. Pay this tax as a form of forced retirement savings. Health insurance isn’t fundamentally different than that.

        Your money and your body may have qualitative differences rendering governmental compulsion more legitimate in one arena than another.Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Burt Likko says:

          @burt-likko

          But wouldn’t the the ideal reflex — in both cases — be as minimum intrusion/restriction/compulsion as possible? Obviously, the devil is in the details of how much is necessary/warranted and to what ends.Report

          • Burt Likko in reply to Kazzy says:

            I’m not sure that follows, for two reasons.

            First, in a modern western democracy atop a complex industrialized economy, citizens demand certain kinds of services from their government. These services are principally economic: old age pensions, physical and transactional infrastructure, consumer product safety. And these economic concerns creep into nearly everything.

            Second, in a large, pluralistic democracy, a variegated palette of morals and personal decisions must be addressed, triggering an inevitable balancing of majority preference against individual autonomy. If a democratic majority is going to matter at all, sometimes the majority’s preference will prevail.

            Those things suggest to me that an impulse to govern with the lightest possible hand at all times, in all situations, with respect to all subjects, is unlikely to reflect actual governmental behavior.Report

            • Kazzy in reply to Burt Likko says:

              A fair counter. It felt like I was being overly simplistic. I think the section of the OP that several people have quoted below is probably a better distillation of the sentiment I was seeking to express here.Report

    • North in reply to Damon says:

      Agreed, excellent post.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Damon says:

      @damon @north

      Yeah no. The “my body, my choice” argument seems intuitive enough and like all intuitive seeming arguments has a certain base appeal but it is ultimately too simplistic and seems to be designed to avoid grappling with really difficult questions.

      Maybe “my body, my choice” works better with some issues more than others. Let’s look at a difficult one: organ sales. Do we have a need for donated organs? We already sort of have a market for donations in the United States with female eggs. Go to any top college or university and you will see advertisements asking young women to donate their eggs. Officially compensation is not allowed but through clever loopholes and phrasing, a woman can easily make a solid five figures if she donates her eggs. The requirements are usually very narrow tailored: you have to have the right grade and SAT ranges, being athletic helps, couples want as close an ethnic match as possible usually too (which generally means that the couple seeking an egg donation are wealthy and white, though I have seen ads looking for young Jewish women specifically.)

      Donating eggs is hard. You need to pump your body full of hormones and it is invasive surgery with significant recovery time. Why do women do this? Because college costs are through the roof and this is a way to get a lot of cash something like a good middle-class annual salary or close to it.

      The other possible word to describe this situation is financial and stress duress. Why would anyone sell an organ? The need for a lot of money quickly. Who is going to do that? The poor and desperate.

      Why is this a good thing to allow? Why not work to creating a society where people are not in such duress filled situations where they have to turn to selling their organs for the cash. Some people might be in this situation because of financial recklessness. Others through no fault of their own. An untimely layoff coupled with some other unfortunate events.

      A society where people and/or the state can say “Why don’t you sell a kidney or lung, Mr or Ms. Smith? That can get you six figures easy. No need for charity or welfare” is not a world I want to live in.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        Now there might be other good reasons to legalize drug use and sex work like the utter futility of prohibition and that legalization makes it safer for drug addicts and sex workers but “my body, my choice” strikes me as inherently morally and ethically blase.Report

      • Damon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        Yeah, no.

        The left has used “it’s my body my choice” for abortion for decades. Oh, you can say that but not be able to sell a kidney? Square that circle using only the protest line to ensure abortion rights. If it’s a right, it’s applicable to other activities.

        “Why is this a good thing to allow?” Good has nothing to do with it. “Allow”. Sorry, that’s not your call. You allow women to have abortions? That’s big of you. State the right you have to prevent someone to sell their eggs or organs. You don’t have one. You just want to use the power of gov’t to prevent certain activities you disagree with because they offend your moral sensitivities. The same applies to the right.

        The poor and desperate may choose to sell organs. I’m not either but I’d sell mine, likely at the time I was about to die. Why? Because I could add, or have, an estate with a beneficiary. That’s why I’m not an organ donor now. I’m not going to allow someone else to profit from a “free” donation-the doctors, the organ transporters, the hospital, etc. Why shouldn’t I get a slice of the action? It’s MY organ that’s wanted.Report

        • Kim in reply to Damon says:

          If you’re especially lucky, you can sell your autopsy for free medical care!!
          … especially unlucky, that is.Report

        • El Muneco in reply to Damon says:

          One difference that distinguishes abortion and euthanasia on one side from sex work and organ selling on the other is that while all the issues have an aspect of “freedom to sell”, the ones on the other side have a counterbalancing “freedom to not be sold” that has to be juggled.

          There are vanishingly few cases where family members find a rogue doctor to force an abortion on an unwilling woman, but sex trafficking is definitely a thing. Waking up in an ice bath the morning after to find yourself with one kidney is just an urban legend – largely because the market is black. If there were “Max Headroom” style chop shops, there would quite possibly be “Max Headroom” style violence to serve them.

          I don’t know where to draw that line, how to enable people while still protecting the vulnerable from exploitation. I don’t have that issue with euthanasia – I think we can set up a legal structure to enable that.Report

          • Kim in reply to El Muneco says:

            Muneco,
            “Waking up in an ice bath the morning after to find yourself with one kidney is just an urban legend – largely because the market is black”

            what actually occurs is far worse.

            But we’re astonishingly okay with selling women’s wombs to bear other people’s babies.Report

          • Damon in reply to El Muneco says:

            Well of course you have the “freedom not to sell”. As to “not to be sold” that’s already covered in the law. Individuals, and independent types have the innate right for bodily integrity, so trafficking etc. is wrong.Report

    • El Muneco in reply to Damon says:

      The laptop-based solution a doctor in Australia came up with might be a decent start. It puts the process entirely in the patient’s hands. The process is complex enough to provide at least a limited assurance of “sound mind”. The process is rigorous enough that it takes multiple efforts to get through, presumably preventing accidents. There are multiple decision points with failsafes, allowing the patient to change their mind up until the last decision point. The physician who sets it up isn’t even in the room when the process is going on, limiting the opportunity for coercion. Without examining it from an engineering perspective, I don’t know how it deals with equipment failure – but since it runs from a laptop, I’d expect the process to terminate catastrophically (which in this case actually means that it doesn’t kill the patient!).Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    Let us somehow figure out some legislation that will allow for The Government to get a piece of any given estate, automatically. No appeal, no probate, no nothing. You die? The state gets a third.

    We’ll figure out a way to normalize euthanasia.Report

    • North in reply to Jaybird says:

      So if I’m reading you right you’re asserting here that the reason “Right to die” policies aren’t widely in place is because the Gummint doesn’t get to wet its beak?Report

      • Jaybird in reply to North says:

        No, not really. The reason that the reason that there isn’t a more normalized set of arguments that are pro-euthanasia is because government doesn’t wet its beak.

        This isn’t about the policy, it’s about the existence of arguments in service to the policy.

        I imagine we’d have something like arguments focusing on “selfishness” or something of people who no longer are able to produce goods/services and are reduced to appetites who are hoarding wealth or some crap like that.

        We’d see some dark reflections of some of OWH Jr’s arguments surface.

        (And if you’d like to argue that those silly arguments date back to the 20’s and 30’s and our society has antibodies against them (something that I, myself, would have argued a decade ago)… well. I’ll just say that I now think you’ll be surprised by what bubbles up over the next decade or so.)Report

        • North in reply to Jaybird says:

          Hmmm I remain skeptical that pro-euthanasia arguments haven’t been developed simply because there’s no payola for the state to allow it. Viewed that way the state should already pro-euthanasia simply because euthanized sick or dying poor or elderly patients would impose fewer costs on the state which typically ends up footing the bill for them.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to North says:

            It’s not about who is imposing costs. Nobody cares about that.

            It’s about who has something worth taking.

            We’re not going to hear pro-euthanasia arguments in service to talking about the 90 year old in a social-security old folks’ home (or, we will, but not at first as that won’t be the focus at first).

            It’ll be in service to talking about the people who retired with millions.Report

            • North in reply to Jaybird says:

              Money is fungible. A penny saved is a penny earned.

              The premise is: Government isn’t supporting/pushing assisted suicide because there’s no financial incentives in place for them to do so.
              I observe that there is financial incentive already. They’re not pushing assisted suicide. I think that puts the original premise in significant doubt.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to North says:

                I’m not talking about “Government supporting/pushing assisted suicide”.

                I doubt the Ad Council will be throwing some bits together.

                I’m talking about the social/cultural normalization of arguments in service to euthanasia. So we’d see these arguments blooming in the wild.

                Discussions about euthanasia in service to a larger society (as opposed to a libertarian level of selfish emphasis on the individual).

                The government doesn’t have to do anything but set up the program. The arguments about how it’s important for people to use the program will bloom naturally.Report

              • Patrick in reply to Jaybird says:

                The government doesn’t have to do anything but set up the program. The arguments about how it’s important for people to use the program will bloom naturally.

                I more or less agree with this. Corollary: the arguments about how it’s important for the government to stop doing this program will also bloom naturally.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Patrick says:

                They’ll be variants of arguments that we’re giving now, though.

                The best ones will be based in the deontological arguments and the ones talking about measurables will prove, at first, to be overwrought.Report

    • Vikram Bath in reply to Jaybird says:

      Not “The Government.” If it were the state government that got a third of your estate, then I could see that happening–particularly if it is the state in which you die.Report

    • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

      Let us somehow figure out some legislation that will allow for The Government to get a piece of any given estate, automatically. No appeal, no probate, no nothing. You die? The state gets a third.

      We already have that legislation. It’s called the “Death Estate Tax.” In the beginning it was viewed as serving the vital function of maintaining America’s valued commitment to meritocracy…

      We’ll figure out a way to normalize euthanasia.

      Just like “we” have normalized Death to maximize the inheritance tax, yeah?Report

      • greginak in reply to Stillwater says:

        Give him a break, it’s hard to shoe horn the “eviiillll gubmint” angle into every issue. Sometimes you gotta push a bit harder to get it there.Report

      • That’ll be a fun one, with them going up against the AMA and the hospital associations. Those last six months are often extremely lucrative for the medical industry…Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Michael Cain says:

          The treatments given to people in their last six months of life help subsidize treatments for people with years of productivity left in them.

          Would we really want to turn that income stream off?Report

        • Kim in reply to Michael Cain says:

          Mike,
          you know anyone in the health care side of things?
          Because with the new Medicare “readmissions” thing, people ain’t so worried about insurance death panels anymore…

          (Yes, they’re working on it. Yes, they’re keeping it quiet — nobody actually wants to admit how badly they fucked up)Report

  3. Kazzy says:

    “Cases in which these stipulations are not met are likely to be treated as homicides rather than suicides.”

    Isn’t this limited to physician (or other person) assisted suicide? If someone who doesn’t meet those criteria takes his life all on his own (e.g., self-inflicted wound, OD), is it considered a homicide?Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

      WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP CALLING ONE OF THE LAWYERS!!!

      If I give you the gun with which you shoot yourself, what does the law say?

      If I didn’t know you were going to shoot yourself, what does it say?
      If I *DID* know you were going to shoot yourself (and, indeed, that’s why I gave you the gun), what does it say?

      I don’t know but I am willing to guess that there might be something out there like “accessory to suicide” or “conspiracy to commit suicide” that could be thrown at me at the criminal level and the sky is probably the limit for the civil side of things.

      Could one of the law-types who know something about this chime in?Report

      • Kim in reply to Jaybird says:

        Depends on whether you’re giving it to the president. In which case it might be treason.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

        @jaybird

        I, personally, would not say that the person who provided the gun had any moral culpability (beyond that which he assumes himself) and, as such, should have no culpability legal or otherwise. The only issue I’d take is if the provider knew or had good reason to believe that the individual in question was not of sound mind. Though “having good reason” is a phrase I am very intentionally going to refuse to elaborate on!

        But now I wonder… how would I feel if he provided that gun to someone who went and killed someone else? I don’t know. Is that sufficiently different such that we could then assign moral (and perhaps legal) culpability? My gut says yes but we probably shouldn’t make laws based on my gut.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

          Feelings are waaaaaay outside of my wheelhouse. I’m wondering to what extent the law covers this and what it says.Report

          • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

            Oh, yes, I’m curious as well.

            My hunch is that the law doesn’t explicitly address this situation but that the state has all sorts of ways of assigning guilt/culpability which are probably wildly inconsistent but which mean the practical answer is, “Anything is possible.”Report

  4. Chip Daniels says:

    Actively ending a life, any life, probably should always be controversial and subject to debate.

    War, execution, euthanasia- all of there have a tremendous potential for abuse and corruption, and the stakes are high enough that there isn’t any way hat I can see that the issue could possibly become so settled as to be normalized.Report

  5. Kazzy says:

    Describing pain as “subjective” to me is interesting. Maybe that term has a different use in the scientific/medical communities than the general colloquial usage, but when I hear that something is “subjective”, it implies to me a certain amount of agency or choice in the matter. My understanding of variations in sensory integration/processing is that much of this is hard-wired. I am not an expert but as a teacher of younger children (and now parent of two), I’ve read up on the matter and can attest to variations being physiological and not “subjective” as I understand that term. But maybe I’m just misunderstanding the term. The link seems to support my understanding of the phenomenon even if we differ on vocabulary. But if others interpret that term as I do, I think it risks making people less-than-empathetic to others individual experiences.Report

  6. Aaron David says:

    Overall, I am with @damon above on what the gov’t can/cannot dictate about my body. If I want an abortion, if I want to shoot heroin, if I want to smoke a cigar, if I want another piece of chocolate cate, it’s my decision as it is my body. In many ways this is the foundation of my disagreement with the idea of gov’t being involved with health care.

    “Both sides need to recognize that mobilizing the Federal Government to enshrine personal beliefs — whatever form they may take — in the language of the law is not the proper function of bureaucracy in this country or any other.” This is an increadibly important point, and thank you for making it.

    Excellent post HollyReport

    • Tod Kelly in reply to Aaron David says:

      @aaron-david

      “the gov’t can/cannot dictate about my body. If I want an abortion, if I want to shoot heroin, if I want to smoke a cigar, if I want another piece of chocolate cate, it’s my decision as it is my body.”

      I agree with the core of this sentiment, but I am also sympathetic to those who would argue that not all or your examples are things you are just doing to your body. Abortion obviously has an effect on one other body, and smoking done in public does as well.

      (I have less sympathy for many things that go beyond that, however. I am in agreement with you that you should be able to help yourself chocolate cake, or have a cigar — though I suspect that we would disagree on the subject of whether or not the government should be allowed to inform the public about the health risks of those activities.)Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Tod Kelly says:

        Also, as we get closer and closer to universal insurance coverage, we may find that we have compelling interests in the bad habits of others. It’d be one thing if you wanted to shoot heroin but I’m going to have to pay for your Naloxone…Report

        • Tod Kelly in reply to Jaybird says:

          I am also somewhat sympathetic to those arguments, but not nearly as much.

          Because I don’t see public policy as ways to measure ideological purity, I am OK with having a sliding scale when it comes to indirect effects.

          Being in an office building with little ventilation and a large number of chain smokers (which, btw, I am old enough to have been the status quo during my early post-college work years) has a fairly large indirect impact on me.

          On the other hand, knowing that a quarter of a tenth of a cent of my annual tax burden went to pay for Naloxone, on the other hand, seems to have such an extraordinarily low indirect impact on me that without a demand for ideological purity, I cannot fathom objecting too much. (Which is not to say that it would be that little, just using a number I pulled out of my butt to make the point. If it cost me $1,000 a year in taxes, then that indirect effect has far greater impact, and I wold adjust my reasoning.)Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Tod Kelly says:

            It won’t be ideological purity, I don’t think. Not down in the trenches, anyway. It’ll be the moral busybody impulse manifesting.

            I’m interested in seeing whether the “Body Positivity” people will hold the moral high ground over the “Obesity Epidemic” people or vice versa… and the extent to which the PPACA stirs that particular pot.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

              Yeah, here’s a blast from the past. Shazbot put it better than I could:

              Your actions are costing other individuals in society whom are paying to help you, thereby making it harder to help others, therefore you have a moral obligation to act so as to need less of that help, amd the state will sometimes write that obligation into law when doing so is possible without draconian violations of individual autonomy.

              We live in a world of mutual obligations to help each other and to not misuse that help. Unless you are a hardcore, Nozick-style libertarian who thinks that the only factor we should look at when deciding what is good and just policy is to ensure that we don’t violate individual rights.

              At the time, I argued against this (sputtering!).

              I failed to see that he was, functionally, right. Not in the moral sense of Right” but in the… engineering, I guess?… sense of “correct”.

              This *IS* how it’s going to play out.Report

            • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

              It won’t be ideological purity, I don’t think. Not down in the trenches, anyway. It’ll be the moral busybody impulse manifesting.

              Question: How is moral busybodying not ideological?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

                I’m more making a distinction between it coming from the gut versus it coming from a systematic theology/philosophy.

                If you’re saying that I shouldn’t split that hair, then fine.Report

            • Dave in reply to Jaybird says:

              @jaybird

              I’m interested in seeing whether the “Body Positivity” people will hold the moral high ground over the “Obesity Epidemic” people or vice versa… and the extent to which the PPACA stirs that particular pot.

              The PPACA won’t have anything to do with that mess.

              When I was first getting back in shape and losing weight, I saw this debate from the perspective of the weight loss community. Since then and getting more hardcore with lifting and training, I’ve seen this debate from the fitness community side. From the fitness side, there’s nothing at all positive being said about the Body Positivity movement, and some of the worst fat shaming I’ve ever seen came from the people that were overweight, transformed and now take it upon themselves to make the fit lifestyle a moral issue.

              I’m going to leave it at that.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Dave says:

                The debate, as far as I can tell, is gendered and one side is much more… sympathetic… than the other.

                But I take your point that the PPACA will probably not be used as a cudgel by those whose parents passed along good muscle genes.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                Why do we assume that “body positivity” and “obesity epidemic” are somehow mutual exclusive positions to hold? I don’t think anyone should be shamed for how they look. However, if good medical science tells us that it is healthier to be 180 pounds than 300 pounds, we shouldn’t ignore that fact. We shouldn’t beat 300 pound people over the head with it but we also shouldn’t stick our head in the sands.

                The problem is these ideas become ideologies and then movements and everyone stakes out an extreme position and holds fast to it.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                On an individual level? Of course they can both be held by the same people.

                It won’t play out that way once it reaches the level of culture war, though. We won’t have a “let’s be reasonable about this!” side, except for in the comment sections of certain blogs.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

                How much of that is…

                A) Because each side stakes out an extreme position (i.e., “It is evil shaming if you ever comment on anything related to weight and health!”; “Anyone who doesn’t look like they belong on the cover of a fitness mag is a moral degenerate who is choosing to be unhealthy and suck of the teat of others!”)
                B) Because each side reads the other as staking out an extreme position (i.e., “They said that saturated fat is linked to heart disease… BODY SHAMING!”; “They said don’t call them fatty-fat-fat-fats… THEY WANT TO BE UNHEALTHY MONSTERS!”)

                My hunch is that both happen and cause the other via a feedback loop. Which is unfortunate.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                My hunch is that both happen and cause the other via a feedback loop.

                We’re currently debating whether such a loop exists with the Trump thing right now, interestingly enough.

                It’s always funny to see these loops pop up in the wild.Report

              • Dave in reply to Kazzy says:

                @kazzy

                I don’t think stuff like this particularly helps.Report

        • Patrick in reply to Jaybird says:

          Relevant.

          “Roughly half of cancer deaths in the United States could be prevented or forestalled if all Americans quit smoking, cut back on drinking, maintained a healthful weight and got at least 150 minutes of exercise each week, according to a new report.

          These same measures would also reduce the number of new cancer diagnoses by 40% to 70%.

          For men, universal embrace of this lifestyle could avert or delay 67% of cancer deaths and prevent 63% of new malignancies each year, researchers calculated. If all of the nation’s women did the same, their yearly cancer mortality rates would fall by 59% and new cancers would drop 41%.”Report

      • Aaron David in reply to Tod Kelly says:

        Well, I think they are pretty simple, and require very little governmental action. You don’t want smoking in your bar, then don’t allow it. Post a sign out front, and all is good. You want smoking in your bar, then allow it. Post a sign out front, and all is good. I know, I know, then we get to the tragidy of the commons. Hey, lets have a vote, on the common areas! That sounds like a good way to decide it.

        If the gov’t wants to inform the people on the health risks, fine. Just pay for it, don’t make someone else pay for it.

        If the gov’t wants to assume the burden of something, then it needs to pay for the burden. From no-smoking in public area signs, to health warnings or calorie info in restaurants. Pay for the signs and pay rent on the space they occupy.

        /gets down from libertarian soapbox…Report

        • Damon in reply to Aaron David says:

          “You don’t want smoking in your bar, then don’t allow it. Post a sign out front, and all is good. You want smoking in your bar, then allow it. Post a sign out front”

          Out west you see a lot of these signs, but “smoking” is replaced with “firearms”. So you can tell folks you want or don’t want guns in your establishment but you can’t tell them you do want smoking in your establishment.Report

  7. Kazzy says:

    Great piece, Holly. I’m probably somewhat radical in that I think every individual has the right to dictate the terms of his/her death. I recognize that the choice is not without externalities (a father of four killing himself will almost undoubtedly impact his children and almost certainly negatively) but I don’t know that any of them suffice to deny this right.

    But I think this must be coupled with an explicit understanding that no one can be compelled to facilitate, cooperate, support, or otherwise be complicit in another’s death. If that father of four wants to pay me to shoot him, I can say no.

    I suppose a question would arise around the role of physicians. Do they have any ethical obligation to provide a course of treatment, even one which kills the patient (with his consent) and/or which they find morally repugnant? I’d be curious how this functions currently, as there are undoubtedly procedures that current exist and are legal which doctors may object to for one reason or another (I immediately think of abortion but also plastic surgery done on minors or risky procedures); I don’t believe that a doctor is beholden to a patient’s wishes but maybe I’m wrong. Regardless, even if there are ethical responsibilities to provide procedures-on-demand, I’d carve out an exemption here.

    Another complicating factor is gaining and confirming consent. If you walked in on me with a smoking gun in my hand and a dead man on the floor, could I simply insist, “No, really, he wanted me to!” We’d probably want some sort of formal legal mechanism to ensure that consent was given and was actually reflective of the individual’s wishes. And even then we’d probably need some sort of oversight. Suppose the guy dotted his i’s and crossed his t’s but at the last minute said, “No, no, don’t do it! I’ve changed my mind!” What then? If I still shot him, would it be murder?

    Complicated, no doubt. But ultimately I think the goal should be to reserve as much rights within the individual as possible.Report

  8. Riley says:

    In the United States the irony is that we care more about the comfort and dignity of those convicted of capital crimes in a death penalty state than we do the comfort and dignity of those suffering from a terminal illness.

    Imagine a form of judicial execution that replicated, say, all the agonies of terminal cancer. Who but the most psychotic sadist could even imagine such a thing? The courts have repeatedly blocked executions because the methods or procedures used were thought to impose cruel and unusual punishment. At the same time, the courts have insisted that the functional equivalent of a cruel and unusual punishment must be administered to those whose sole crime was to fail to commit a suitably heinous capital crime.

    Anyone who has been with a terminally ill family member or friend has heard them wish for the end. Should we really continue to say, sorry, no, a dignified and painless exit is reserved only for our most violent criminals?Report

    • Don Zeko in reply to Riley says:

      While I agree with where you end up, there’s a distinction between what we affirmatively impose as the just and appropriate infliction of violence by the state and what we allow to happen. Plus the evidence that capital punishment is painless and immediate is far less conclusive than I would like.Report

  9. Oscar Gordon says:

    What has become necessary is this: Both sides need to recognize that mobilizing the Federal Government to enshrine personal beliefs — whatever form they may take — in the language of the law is not the proper function of bureaucracy in this country or any other.

    A statement that needs to be heard more often.

    Hell, it should not only be inscribed above the door to congress, but on the desk of ever legislator, everywhere.

    PS Good post!Report

  10. trizzlor says:

    If you believe force should be used to prevent someone from making a rational choice to end their own life, you’re functionally totalitarian.Report

    • Stillwater in reply to trizzlor says:

      It is a weird dynamic. At least to me. And I agree. But I think the worry is more about complicity in helping a person end their life more than the bare fact, or morality, of their having done so.

      Slippery slopes and all. (Reality, for humans, is a very slippery place!) At least for folks who think along those lines.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to trizzlor says:

      As someone who recently called the just-in-time artisanal euthanasia folks, I can easily see where Scott Adams is coming from in his controversial “I hope my father dies soon” essay. (Hey! We talked about it here!)

      I tend to think that there are a lot of changes that will attend us switching from a “Officially No Euthanasia (but, unofficially, there are a lot of things that happen and we don’t talk about them in public)” to “Okay, We Will Officially Allow Euthanasia”.

      Are the changes that we’ll get worse than the policy now?

      As I said, I recently called the just-in-time artisanal euthanasia folks… but I sincerely suspect that the changes we’ll get will not all be rainbow bridges and terra cotta handprints. If we’re down with that, we’re down.Report

      • Tod Kelly in reply to Jaybird says:

        (Hey! We talked about it here!)

        Also here, FWIW.Report

        • Stillwater in reply to Tod Kelly says:

          I missed that post in real time, Tod. I’m sorry I missed it. Nothing in my own life approaches the feelings you must have experienced during that event. My condolences not only for the loss of your mother but the circumstances as well.

          Death sucks. Death is inevitable. The the sooner we get a grip on reconciling those two things the better off we’ll all be.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Tod Kelly says:

          I forgot about that one. That still sucks.

          You’re a lot closer to Oregon than I am. Have you noticed any shifts in how things are done?

          If we, as a country, had something like Measure 16, would you be allowed to bring cups of water today?Report

      • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

        Have to say, I just don’t understand you Jaybird. Like, at all. (You seem to be driven by a combination of reflexive contrianism coupled with an Unintended Consequence/Slippery Slope Leading Towards Ruin Paranioa.

        As a bare fact – morally, ethically, pragmatically – a person SHOULD have the right to terminate their own life when they rationally determine doing so is in their best interest, and yet you – of all people! – find the PERMISSION of people to act on their individual rights more problematic than maintaining a coercive regime under which such acts can’t be assisted by trained professionals.

        Ie., I don’t think you’re worried about gummint over-reach at all – since eliminating government from individual decisionmaking is a good thing, yeah? – as much as a moral impulse that codifying assisted suicide is “gut level” wrong.Report

        • Stillwater in reply to Stillwater says:

          OR maybe here’s a better way to say it:

          Alternatingly, you’re persistently worried about either government OR society riding a slippery slope to our ruin, irrespective of whether the slope is created by restricting or enhancing the gumints or individuals freedom to act. But that ends up being a worry about a tautology.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Stillwater says:

          I’ve come to think of Jaybird as a spaghetti argumentlist (toss a pot of maybe-ready arguments against the fridge, see what sticks). As such, unless he has made a pretty concrete statement that he believes X, I wouldn’t hold him to any argument he puts forth, he may just be trying it out to see if it works, or if it gets shredded like a rabbit in a cougar pen.Report

          • Stillwater in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            So … just a very intelligent BORED dude throwing stuff out there for his amusement?Report

          • Kazzy in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            While this isn’t an invalid approach, there is an air of inauthenticity or insincerity to it, especially when done without transparency.

            If you want to play a form of Devil’s Advocate, you sort of have to own it. Otherwise you’re not engaging the other person on equal terms and that can quickly become frustrating. I’m not here to put other people’s ideas-about-ideas to the test. I want to put my ideas in conversations with their ideas. When talking with Jay (who I really like, mind you!), I’m sometimes unclear if I’m talking to Jay or some mask Jay has temporarily assumed to challenge me. I don’t mind the challenge; just let me know your plan.Report

          • Marchmaine in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            Well, this is most uncharitable. I’m not an Atheist Feminist Libertarian so we’re hardly on the same team so to speak, but I see Jaybird’s comments as among the most consistent here. I appreciate his keeping folks honest by asking many uncomfortable questions from within y’all’s framework and his ability to get beyond the simple result and into possible implications.

            From my perspective, many of his rabbits beat the shit out of the cougars around here…Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Marchmaine says:

              @kazzy @marchmaine

              I don’t think Jaybird is being dishonest or just playing Devil’s Advocate, I think he is honestly exploring the given domains of ideas to try and suss out where he wants to settle (given he’s had something of a disruption of his ideologies as of late). Sometimes he does that by turning things on their head.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                @oscar-gordon

                But at that point he is essentially using others to pursue that end. Which isn’t wrong, but he should make that known. Because participating in conversations like that can be incredibly frustrating for the other person and we should be able to enter into them (or not!) with a sense of the other person’s intentions.

                I see the value in what Jaybird does. But it isn’t without cost and the lack of transparency makes the costs greater or involuntarily taken on.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Kazzy says:

                Pretty sure Jaybird made two big posts about how his trip to Qatar shook things up for him, and he’s made reference to it numerous times in comments and other posts.

                He’s been pretty transparent about it.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                But within individual threads and conversations, I’d like to know if I’m talking to Jaybird-expressing-Jaybird’s-thoughts or Jaybird-using-the-conversation-as-a-petri-dish-for-ideas.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Kazzy says:

                Seems to me, those aren’t exclusionary states. Assume both are at play at any given moment. It makes parsing his thoughts a bit more challenging, but on the whole, I find it a worthwhile bit of mental exercise.Report

              • Kazzy in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                But if someone asks me a question not because they are actually seeking the answer but because they want me to ponder the question and what its answer means for me, they aren’t really being genuine in asking that question. And that is often how it feels when talking with Jaybird. I often will say to him, point blank, “What is your point here?” and get little in return. But maybe that is on me for continuing down that path with him.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Kazzy says:

                Unless a person specifically says, “Ask yourself this…”, how do you know they don’t want an answer from you. Your answer, and how you got to that answer, are useful information if someone is looking for something themselves.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

                Why in the world would you want to avoid pondering a question?Report

              • Mike Schilling in reply to Jaybird says:

                You might turn into a lab mouse.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

                Thrasymachus?

                Now don’t let that go to your head… remember, 80 people who thought Socrates was not guilty voted for his death.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                As we know, folks get very attached to their ideological commitments. They are often internalized so completely that they constitute a part of a person’s self-identity, a component of who (they think) they are. So I give Jaybird a lot of credit for not only being personally honest enough to reject his old views when he realized they weren’t doing the work he thought they were, but for doing so publicly here at the OT, where such an admission could be used by others as an “I told ya so!” moment.

                (And to be honest, I very much like the way he described his current state: that he’s wandering through a post-atheist gnosticism. Not only is that eminently fair and reasonable, but it seems like a pretty good place to be!)Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                I’m pretty much with Marchmaine above. Jay is pretty good at walking with someone along the path of their ideology and asking questions at the ends.

                Sometimes there is substance, or lessons there, sometimes there aren’t, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect or diminish his position.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

          I am downright certain that, in any given case that we, as highly educated folks (who primarily hang out with other highly educated folks) would share as an example from our own lives would get me to reach for some Kleenex and tell them that what happened was something that should not have happened and we should have had a process to make sure that something better happened and we’ll all have a good cry.

          Me and mine are steeped in thick, buttery privilege.

          What happens when you take some cultural norms created by and for thick, buttery privileged people and start applying these practices to other parts of society?

          I’m trying to not be hung up on government anymore. Government is just another word for the things we do together. It’s just another word for culture… but moving from “unofficial” to “official” indicates a shift in the culture… and when this culture starts oozing from the nice part of town to the more authentic part of town, it’s going to have handmaidens.Report

          • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

            when this culture starts oozing from the nice part of town to the more authentic part of town, it’s going to have handmaidens.

            Sure. Just like if the cultural shifts were reversed. Cultural oozing has handmaidens!

            What happened to the deontological Jaybird I’ve argued with? Is that only a stance when it serves your (entirely subjective, at this point) goals to prevent privilege-culture from oozing outward? Seems to me that if culture’s evolve, then a hypersensitivity to Unintended Consequences is really, in bare terms, a fools game since it leads to paralysis. The best of us do the best we can given the evidence directly in front of us, based on dispassionate reason applied to a spectrum of options. Then we move forward, fully understanding that things will inevitably change over time.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

              My deontology got shaken hard by a huge dose of hard cultural relativism.

              I’m becoming much less interested in moral fabric than in the evolution of culture and systems and the things most likely to result in sustainability and the things most likely to result in high trust/high collaboration and whether they overlap at all.

              I’m beginning to suspect that they don’t.

              So I suppose I’m wandering through a post-atheist gnosticism for a while.Report

              • Francis in reply to Jaybird says:

                If by sustainability you mean the kinds of policies that will result in 10 billion people living on this planet without destroying it for the people living in the 22nd century, then no, probably not.

                Even without the issue of ghg being a pollutant, the American lifestyle needs a lot of land, a lot of water, and a lot of energy. As China and India shake off their socialistic / command economies and develop a robust middle class their citizens want what we have. Are the resources even there?

                And, of course, ghgs are changing the planet around us. As people moved into cities, the cities built sewers and people had to pay the cost as to stop polluting. As the EPA got going, businesses had to stop polluting soils and groundwater, and had to pay to for the cost of cleanup of their prior practices. And now as people around the world are emitting CO2 by the megaton and that practice is changing the world we live on, people are going to have to stop doing that, and pay for the alternatives.

                No, I don’t see current American conservative politics ever getting around to trusting liberals on paying to capture these externalities.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Francis says:

                Maybe you’ll have more luck with China and India’s robust middle class.Report

              • Francis in reply to Jaybird says:

                The Chinese government is not exactly known for listening to its constituents. And as for the Indian government, Indian and Pakistan had temperatures exceeding 122 degrees last week. See, for example, here (somewhat of an extremist website, but still, that’s really hot).

                So if Pres Hillary starts talking about taking on America’s share of its responsibility for dealing with global warming, so that we don’t have food riots, instability, civil war and refugees on an ever-growing scale over the next 20 years (not to mention the years thereafter), how does that sit with you?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Francis says:

                I suspect that the small-scale food riots, instability, civil war, and refugee crisis we have coming will have global warming as one of their causes, but I also suspect we’re more likely to have other, more immediate, causes being claimed by the major players.

                As such, I see Pres Hillary’s appeals to Global Warming in the face of such a calamity as likely to fall on deaf ears and her quotations will be taken out of context in surprisingly effective attack ads.

                (Though I think I’m on record as thinking that Trump is getting elected.)Report

              • Kim in reply to Jaybird says:

                1 in 4 chance of civil unrest in America.
                Civil War ongoing in Syria because of Global Warming.
                Civil Unrest in Egypt.

                Global warming is already causing severe distress.
                We haven’t started seeing massive population dieoffs, but India’s not that far away (it’s NOT the heat, it’s the humidity — they’re pretty close to “kills everything” levels).Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Francis says:

                And by “sustainability”, I mean something closer to “recognizable across multiple generations” rather than “environmentally sustainable”.

                One of the things that impressed me in Qatar was that they still read the religion of their forefathers in the original language and the extent to which their religious views were similar to the religious views of their grandparents (which were similar to the religious views of their grandparents (which were similar to the religious views of *THEIR* grandparents)) and I was fascinated because, if you asked me, behind the veil, whether Islam would have staying power, I’m not sure that I would have thought it would have. I think that I would have thought that it would have died in the desert.

                But no. Even with something like Ramadan, it’s sustainable. For centuries.

                As someone who comes from a culture where it’s considered shameful to have opinions similar to those of one’s grandparents, this is very interesting. (This part of the comment is not intended to inspire stories where “my grandparents were totally progressive! The reason they were willing to work on the atom bomb was in service to gay marriage!” or something like that. Even though I’m sure your grandparents were totally misplaced transplants from 2015 who happened to be in 1945, my point is about society in general rather than your grandparents in particular.)

                Given what we see going on with the high trust/high collaboration societies of Europe in the face of the refugee/immigrant crisis, I very much wonder about what the new equilibrium will look like after the uncertainties in the system resolve themselves.

                That’s what I mean by sustainability in this context.Report

              • Kim in reply to Jaybird says:

                J,
                the grandparents of this generation were secularists. Look at Iran, look at Palestine, look at Turkey.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Kim says:

                Secularism seems to create fallow, but fertile, fields.

                I wonder if “progressivism” has flowering plants that mere “secularism” does not.Report

  11. dexter says:

    @francis, A good way to reduce co2 emissions would be to move most of the industries back to America. That cuts emissions in two ways in that America has much stricter epa rules and we would not have all those large ships emitting more co2 than the airline industry.Report

    • Francis in reply to dexter says:

      agreed! And a great way to motivate companies to do so is to start levying a carbon tax at the federal level. If foreign countries won’t match our tax or disclose the carbon use associated with the goods in question, we will just calculate (make up) the likely carbon emission associated with foreign made goods and levy it at the point of entry. That should thrill Trump.Report

  12. Heisenberg says:

    Two things:

    1. When it becomes easier to avoid homicide charges if the right forms are filled out, you will see homicides disguised as suicides.

    2. When suicide is normalized, you will see more socially sanctioned suicides for reasons we would not sanction today. (See how euthanasia laws are driving disabled people to suicide in Europe die to social pressure.)

    A world where euthanasia is legalized and notmalized will result in more people getting away with murder and more people being pressured into suicide for the sin of physical non-conformity. This is not speculation. It is what happens.

    Weird to me how neither advocates or critics of legal euthanasia talk about this, but there you go.Report

    • Thanks for making this comment. Disabled people do talk about it. There’s a wide range of opinion, but one of you basic points “and more people being pressured into suicide for the sin of physical non-conformity” I think is well accepted in this community.

      One activist organization is Not Dead Yet.

      After my brain injury more than one “friend” said to me something along the lines “If what happened to you happened to me I’d kill myself.”

      The other issue not covered here is parents murdering their disabled children and getting sympathy for it.Report

      • Heisenberg in reply to Atomic Geography says:

        Thanks for making me aware of this organization. I think they’ll have my support.

        I used to be a “progressive” on this issue until I learned how often disabled people are basically murdered in places where assisted “suicide” is legal, and how devalued the lives of the disabled are in Europe.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Heisenberg says:

      One of the things about a high trust/collaboration society that it’s easy to overlook is the level of collaboration required for a society to embrace the differently abled. Some differences are more easily embraced than others, of course, but as the collaboration levels go down somewhat, the less easily embraced will find themselves embraced less.Report

  13. I’ve read almost all the comments and I don’t think anyone has said this explicitly (although Heisenberg and a few others above do talk about what types of norms a more “liberal” regime would validate), so I will.

    The “right to die” will “always” be controversial not because the US is uniquely conservative or because people are clinging irrationally to their religion in an “aw shucks, don’t they realize they’re just postponing heaven?” way. It will always be controversial because we’re talking about helping people die, which could mean that we’ll be helping people die who might not really want to die, or who if they wait five minutes or five days or five years might have second thoughts.

    I’m not saying we shouldn’t help people die. I really don’t know where I come down. And regardless of where I come down–and regardless what country we live in or how “enlightened” we are–it will remain controversial.Report

  14. Holly says:

    Thanks so much to everyone for their comments, I love seeing the conversation and discussion that this topic generates. It’s so important to be openly talking about this, regardless of what side you come down on, so thank you!Report