Where Intent is Blind
Attention Madison residents: your State Senator has reintroduced a Death "with Dignity" bill that would legalize doctor assisted suicide in Wisconsin.
Read more here.
Ignore for a second the possibility of arguing that this is anti-life, which of course it is. To sponsor this bill in a climate where we still 40 million people with no health care coverage is ludicrous. Sponsoring this bill - even if its passage where a good thing - is putting the cart before the horse.
Do you know why the poor are more sick than middle- and upper-class Americans? Besides smoking more often, they get less health care. Assisted suicide will absolutely have a more pronounced effect on the poor, as they will constantly be given the choice between a bill, or a peaceful death.
That a Democrat misses this floors me.
Then again, what should I expect from Fred Risser....
posted by Lyons at
1:54 PM
6 Comments:
Nothing says compassion like forcing a terminally ill miserable person to continue incurring immense pain and accruing medical bills against their will ...
If our most fundamental right is to live, then our second-most fundamental right is to die.
9:44 PM
You're going to have to prove that one philosophy style, because I'm not even close to picking up that logic...
2:15 PM
Anything that can be considered a "right" is defined by the ability to decline it.
For example, as an American, I have the right to free speech. That doesn't mean I'm required to speak; if I want to sit silently and never say a word, that's just as much my right as if I were on the street corner preaching the gospel.
I have the right to bear arms; I choose not to.
I have the right to worship the God of my choice; I also have the right not to worship any God at all.
I have the right to live; I also have the right to decide I don't want to live.
9:17 PM
To sum up my point: A right is only a right if you have the free will to decline it. Otherwise, that's a requirement, and somehow the phrase "requirement to life" just doesn't quite make sense.
9:19 PM
First of all, you didn’t answer my question.
The clause of your argument is “We have a right to life.”
The conclusion was: “We have a right to die.”
I asked for what the second clause would be that allows you to jump from clause to conclusion.
That being said…
If a right is something that can be opted out of, passed on, declined, while still being offered, then the list of ‘rights’ now includes:
*Upgrading my butterburger to a basket meal
*Having a child
*Paying higher points on a mortgage to get a lower rate, or visa versa
*Wearing a blue shirt instead of a white one
*GM or Ford
My point is that your language is broad enough to include any decision we might ever make where we have the freedom to choose its opposite. These are decisions that are privileges to living in America, and ought not be encouraged or discouraged by Uncle Sam.
The difference between a right and an opt-outable decision is that a right needs special protection by the government against those who would infringe upon it. What creates a necessary protection from the government, I would argue, is natural law whence the Founding Fathers proclaimed life, liberty, and the pursuit.
4:09 PM
If we are concerned about freedom, is it that much of a leap from this bill to a point where doctors actually "recommend" suicide? How free would a patient be if that were the case? Will insurance companies continue to cover expenses after a doctor "recommends" suicide?
From a discussion about legal doctor assisted suicide in Holland:
Holland legalized euthanasia. What began as a few extraordinary cases, has now become routine. 130,000 people die each year in Holland, and up to 20,000 are either killed or helped to die by doctors. As many as half did not ask to be killed.
These now include newborns judged to have a poor quality of life, a depressed adult who was physically well,(5) and also depressed teenagers.
Hospitalized seniors are routinely visited by an organization that offers to oversee their case to prevent their doctor from killing them. The Dutch Patients' Association placed a warning in the press that, in many hospitals, patients are being killed without their will or knowledge, or the knowledge of their families, and advised the patients and their families to carefully inquire on every step in the treatment, and when in doubt, to consult a reliable expert outside the hospital.
Judges originally set up qualifications that were suppose to be honored before a doctor could kill a patient. In 2002 these were confirmed in statute law. These include repeated voluntary requests to die, uncontrollable pain, "Force Majeure" (doctor has no other choice), witnesses and two doctors who agree. But few of these are even considered, and the requirement for a voluntary request, by a rational person, repeatedly made, has been routinely ignored.
11:50 AM
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