Brittany Maynard postpones assisted suicide
Assisted suicide is a huge topic about which I have tremendously conflicted feelings, including compassion for those who are suffering so greatly that they feel the need to consider it.
But this isn’t going to be a long, complex article on the topic in general. I will note, however, that I don’t think doctors (or other health professionals, or any official of any sort) should be involved in assisting patients who want to kill themselves. It blurs the role of a doctor, which should not involve outright killing. I say that although I’m well aware that there already is a gray area in which doctors often give pain-relief medication (morphine, for example) in doses that could hasten death, although death is not the goal, pain relief is. That seems a very different thing to me.
It is also easy to see that in countries such as Belgium, where physician-assisted suicide is the law of the land, it has been abused. The slippery slope is very, very real. I’ve written before about Belgium’s law, where it isn’t even necessary that a patient be considered terminal.
Here at home, American Brittany Maynard has gotten a lot of attention recently, in part because she has gone public with her assisted-suicide plan, and in part because she’s a young, telegenic person whose case is especially heartbreaking. She has a brain tumor that will almost certainly kill her fairly soon, but not before it takes away a great many of her faculties and causes her a great deal of suffering.
Maynard and her family moved to Oregon after her diagnosis, because Oregon allows physician-assisted suicide. She had previously announced her plans to kill herself today, November 1, because she could feel herself becoming more and more symptomatic and wanted to go before things got too terrible. But she has postponed her suicide:
I still feel good enough and I still have enough joy and I still laugh and smile with my family and friends enough that it doesn’t seem like the right time right now…But it will come, because I feel myself getting sicker. It’s happening each week.
She indicates she will do it when the time is right. I have no idea whether she will or will not. But I have noticed that in many people (including some I know personally) who have resolved to kill themselves when the medical going gets rough, it’s not unusual for them to change their minds much as Britanny has for now. Life seems to continue to have attractions past the point where they had thought it was time to give up. This seems to me to be a good thing.
When I was younger I had a fascination with the people who were then called the Eskimos, but have since become known as the Inuit. You may recall that they were known for the prevalence of suicide among the old, when they could no longer contribute much to society and were considered a drag under the very harsh conditions that prevailed in that climate.
But I discovered, when I actually studied their mores, that it wasn’t quite like what I had thought. What usually happened was that the older person would state, in a code for suicidal intent, “I think I may just take a walk outside in the snow for a while”—uttered, for example, on a night when the wind was howling and the temperature was 50 below zero. In other words, to go out to freeze to death.
The usual response from the family, though, was something like this: “We still want to see your face among us.” In other words: please don’t go yet; we’re not ready to say goodbye.
Love is tenacious of life, and does not want to let go.
I share your POV neo and it may be of interest to learn that the native American plains Indian tribes had the same cultural tradition. For them, it was a matter of survival under harsh nomadic conditions.
The public promotion of a private tribulation bespeaks all that is wrong with the material ‘me’ in our culture and its concomitant application to the political arena — not necessarily by the actor but definitely by the socio-political directors. Private melodrama and political stagecraft prove yet again, QED, the regnant zeitgeist: the personal is political. God I hate the zeitgeist. The personal is forever, immutably, spiritual.
Being born is very much like inheriting a large sum of money. Not having earned it ourselves, we squander it when we’re young and don’t give it a second thought. When we are older (or when we’re given a “death sentence”) we cling to that dwindling asset with all the fervor that we should have had before.
This is not a criticism of Brittany Maynard; all of us follow, have followed, the same path. We spend our days unknowingly waiting for an epiphany to strike.
I still remember William Holden’s short revelation to Faye Dunaway in the movie Network (apologies, I’m quoting from memory here):
I admired this response, from Philip Johnson, a Catholic seminarian, who has inoperable brain cancer:
http://www.dioceseofraleigh.org/content/raleigh-seminarian-terminal-brain-cancer-responds-brittany-maynard
Wonder if he’ll get the same amount of press!
P.S. : “the regnant zeitgeist: the personal is political. God I hate the zeitgeist. The personal is forever, immutably, spiritual.”
I loved that, Mr. “Pal.”
Neo said:
“It is also easy to see that in countries such as Belgium, where physician-assisted suicide is the law of the land, it has been abused. The slippery slope is very, very real.”
I’m glad Neo brought up the case of Belgium and the slippery slope. The Belgians are already well down the hill hurtling towards the cliff.
Neo also said:
” I will note, however, that I don’t think doctors (or other health professionals, or any official of any sort) should be involved in assisting patients who want to kill themselves. It blurs the role of a doctor, which should not involve outright killing.”
Interesting observation. It doesn’t take much training to terminate a life. If society legalizes assisted suicide, perhaps a hospice nurse could be trained to do the honors.
The same rule, that doctors shouldn’t destroy life, could also apply to abortion. Abortions take more skill than terminating a life but if they are done early perhaps they could be done by a non-physician with training similar to that of a nurse practitioner.
Love does not want to let go, but in the end it has to let go. Grief can last a long time, but eventually life goes on and we adjust to the lose. I favor people who are suffering terrible pain, with no hope of reversal, to be allowed to have access to large doses of morphine that they self administer. Doctors should write the prescription, but never deliver the dose of death.
Finally found the quote. It’s worth noting in its original form because — Paddy Chayefsky:
The link:
http://screen.genius.com/Paddy-chayefsky-network-death-is-suddenly-a-perceptible-thing-to-me-annotated
As a physician, I find that an easy, painless death is something to be desired. I see people come in all the time that are sick as hell and my feeling is that all we are doing is torturing them. Certainly, if you wanted to get information from a bad guy, then just put him in a hospital bed for one week. We can do marvelous things in medicine, but when we can’t, it is not something that you want to see. And that is the problem, most people do not see suffering and death and so it is very remote. I can assure you that you would beg for suicide in short order with a chronic, incurable illness. This also goes to people insinuating themselves into many life decisions of others. Our drug laws are a joke, a cruel one that does not allow adequate treatment of pain and increases the medical expenses of those least able to afford care. Many countries do not have the restrictions in freedom that we have here and are able to obtain pain medications, antibiotics and most other drugs that we have to see a physician for and all they do is ask for them at the druggist, no prescription. We used to have the system and guess what, we have the same percentage of addicts now as we did then. Then we can go into abortion and the laws directed to control women. This is an emotional subject for the religious, but restrictions on abortion significantly effect my ability to care for some critically ill people, then there is the concept that what other people chose to do in their lives in none of societies business. Yes, I know the fetus is being killed and someone has to protect that, but it is wrong to control a woman’s health (pregnancy cares a 30% risk of death without modern medical care).
The fact is that our country was not founded on the foundation of society controlling every aspect of our lives. This did not start until Lincoln. We need a return to freedom and less government control.
If your perception of death is nothingness, then dread is the only rational response. If your perception of death is that it is a doorway to a new form of existence, then anticipation mixed with a bit of uneasiness is a normal reaction to the prospect of one’s death.
Personally, I’m really curious about it, though I’m not in a rush to find out ;-).
We’re all going to die, nobody gets out of life alive. None of us know when our moment will come. Resistance is, in this one case, futile. Save your worries for what you can affect. Whatever will be, will be.
The best acting of a death scene I’ve ever seen was Kevin Spacy’s character in the movie, “L.A. Confidential”.
The best dialog I’ve ever seen of a man aware of his own death was Captain Kirk’s last words to Captain Picard, “It was… fun. Oh my…“.
FWIW, that’s my take on it.
“oh my” yikes, Kirk quotes Sulu !!!!
Wry Mouth,
Thanks for posting that link to the open letter from Philip Johnson, a young Catholic seminarian who is suffering from a similar form of terminal brain cancer:. I was about to post the same link myself:
http://www.dioceseofraleigh.org/content/raleigh-seminarian-terminal-brain-cancer-responds-brittany-
As Johnson points out, suffering is not meaningless (a concept that is completely foreign to much of modern society) and our lives are not our own to take.
david7134, I don’t doubt that as a physician, you’ve witnessed some terrible suffering. But the “right” to die can very quickly become a “duty” to die. And the problem with abortion is that two lives are involved, not one, so it’s not a matter of “controlling a woman’s health.” People (religious or not) who are in favor of legal protection for the unborn don’t see this as a matter of opinion or emotion.
Personally, I’ve been somewhat sickened by the way Brittany Maynard’s sad situation has become a cause célé¨bre, particularly for the advocates of assisted suicide in this country (especially those formerly known as the Hemlock Society).
I am glad she decided against ending her own life today, and I hope she’ll continue to choose life even as her health deteriorates (if not for her own sake for the sake of her husband and parents and other family). That’s the brave, heroic and dignified thing to do.
It’s religion, which predates the founding.
I posted a bad link to the seminarian’s letter, here it is again:
http://www.dioceseofraleigh.org/content/raleigh-seminarian-terminal-brain-cancer-responds-brittany-maynard
I have conflicted feelings on this topic, also. If we can humanely put down a suffering dog, then I think we should at least be open to discussing helping human beings.
As deeply respectful as I am of the faith of the religious right, I have trouble with them imposing their views on everyone else. If you don’t want the left running your life, what makes it okay to impose your viewpoint on others? There can be a level of intolerance for different opinions (granted not nearly as expansive and extreme) that we have come to associate with that Other Religion.
KLS,
I agree with your comment, although I can only support abortion under very strict circumstances. That thing we call a fetus is not an acorn destined to be an oak tree or a zygote destined to be a kitten; it is destined to be a human being. I hold life inside or outside the womb to be precious beyond the convenience of those who are incapable, through their lazy incompetence, of figuring out the simple problem of birth control.
The Authorities will assist you in aborting life, whether before it is born… or after.
Now of course the problem for the slave masters comes in the form of finding good breeding stock and especially when they are running out of cows and other livestock.
How do they raise the value of the farm and maintain the productivity? Why, by importing in more slaves and serfs from outside this nation, that’s how. The blacks don’t satisfy them any more. They need Islamo, African, and Latin American workers.
parker: I consider abortion to be a complicated subject that can be hard to have an honest conversation about. I have never understood how Democrats can argue that they have a right to abort a 39 week pregnancy. And how the public does not turn from them in disgust. This is clearly a baby awaiting to be born and I believe that would be murder. At the same time, I can tell you as a former bleeding heart liberal that, when many Democrat women hear the right talk about abortion, they hear: if my 13 yr old is raped you are going to force my child to carry a pregnancy to term, with all that involves, instead of allowing her to abort an 8wk old fetus.
The chances of that happening may be almost nil but that is what they hear and what they are afraid of. Or, they think that it may be more humane to abort an unwanted child rather than have it raised to be abused and neglected by some resentful crack whore.
The idea that the LEft is interested in positive results from abortion, is the idea that the Left the issue is always the issue. The issue is never the issue.
There is a reason why the Hippocratic Oath has been rejected in favor of progressive ethical standards. Under the traditional standard, a doctor is prohibited from taking or corrupting human life. This is antithetical to libertine demands for elective abortion (i.e. pro-choice) and euthanasia (e.g. rationing).
Abortion is premeditated murder of a wholly innocent human life. Suicide is premeditated murder of a human life. The only legal and moral exception that justifies committing murder is when it is in self-defense, not money, sex, ego, or convenience. It should be self-evident that the state should not carry out premeditated murder without cause, not in war, and certainly not of its own citizens (no matter the perceived “burden” for the mother).
Elective abortion was legalized as a faith-based exemption under the First Amendment. An exclusive right was granted to women so that they may commit or contract for premeditated murder in the privacy of a clinic. This was essentially an establishment of a state religion (i.e. moral philosophy) justified by a false faith. The evolution of human life following conception is not equivalent to the evolution of human life approaching a natural, accidental, or premeditated (e.g. abortion) death. It was normalized under a principle of “pro-choice” or selective protection. The viability standard was a confirmation of a false faith that holds human life is a product of spontaneous conception.
This is where the conversation should begin. The exceptions are just that: exceptions, and should be considered separately. It is worth noting that abortion advocates have retreated from mounting rhetorical attacks to degrade human life when it is uniquely vulnerable. When it lacks a voice to protest and arms to defend its life. It is self-evident to normal people that a woman does not have extra-legal or moral rights to terminate a wholly innocent human life without cause. A woman has exactly the same right as a man to commit murder: self-defense.
That said, the prerequisite for liberty is men and women capable of self-moderating, responsible or “moral” behavior. This is why children have limited liberty until they reach the age of maturation. Men and women who are incapable of self-moderation (e.g. rapists) or responsibility (e.g. pro-choice women and men) must be censured by a civilized society to remove incentive from further expressions of dysfunctional, unproductive, or fetish behaviors, especially those which devalue human life and undermine human fitness.
KL Smith says, “when many Democrat women hear the right talk about abortion, they hear: if my 13 yr old is raped you are going to force my child to carry a pregnancy to term.”
These Dem mamas do not see themselves as having done anything to enable the rapist, and resent their daughter’s pregnancy as a maternal burden. They will also work to relieve the rapist of personal responsibility via the multiculti route (“we tried to immerse her in diversity”)since that rapist is black, fatherless, muslim or all of these. So the blame becomes panned out and diffuse, but self-pitying of the Dem mama is big. Her life got messed up big time, not the girl’s.
The rape “exception” is a legitimate consideration, but it does not change the fact that a human life from conception is wholly innocent. This does require a change in society, and in women and men’s behaviors specifically. A civilized society, a free society, cannot endure with a libertine religion. A technological society cannot advance while corrupting science and, in fact, self-evident truths, in order to accommodate its members’ base desires. Women and men need to make better choices. Women and men who are incapable need to be censured. That seems to be self-evident for every ethical and moral violation other than premeditated abortion/murder. It’s ironic that abortion was legalized as a religious exemption and normalized as a faith-based exception.
KSL,
You refer to a very special circumstance, namely a 13 year old girl who has been raped and subsequently became pregnant. Ok, how many are we talking about??? This is exceedingly rare no matter what the age of the female. Its an outlier that has nothing to do with abortion at 36 weeks. OR in Barack Hussein Obama’s opinion, KILLING as in murder, a baby that survives a late term abortion! The messiah is on record opposing legislation to provide life support to babies who survive late term abortion.
THAT MAKES HIM A MONSTER!!!!!!!!!!!! In a sane society he would be shunned and banished and nowhere within 10,000 miles of the oval office. Or, in my world, fed to the hogs. Hogs eat everything available.
Regarding the Inuit/Eskimo custom: Laurence Oates, of the doomed Scott expedition to the South Pole, dying and wanting to free the others to continue without him, was said to have walked out into a blizzard with the words “I am just going outside and may be some time.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Oates
BTW, in my world many people deserve becoming bacon. That is what my grandfathers and father and uncles did when revenures came to the Kenkucty hollers to bust their stills during prohibition. Their stills represented the money they needed to pay property taxes. When the atf came nosing around in eastern Kentucky they became hog feed, and hogs crunch up the bones leaving only dna tests in hog $£*/. Don’t tread on me or mine. We will feed you to the hogs and the horse you rode in on.
I have seen a fair number of medical students embrace physician-assisted suicide to the point of becoming hostile when one questions it. Decades of leftist instruction in undergraduate school have taken their toll on human decency.
Equally worrisome is this article in the New England Journal of Medicine that not only endorses medical killing but prefers the entire process be taken out of the hands of doctors and handed to government bureaucrats who (we can be sure) won’t be so troubled by killing ‘useless eaters’ as the National Socialists used to put it.
“Redefining Physicians’ Role in Assisted Dying” (Note, they have trouble saying they are killing patients. The are ‘assisting’ their dying.)
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1205283
This is championed by the left, by the way. That is, by the same people who would scream in rage if bureaucrats did an ‘assisted dying’ of a convicted multiple murderer of children.
Rachelle,
I think there is another factor involved. Far fewer young people live aroung larger extended families where they have experienced death of people they really know. I remember in college (many years ago) being amazed that some of my classmates had never been to a funeral. For these people, death is not a reality; it is something they fit into their utopian worldview. The schools know how to build on this lack of life and death experience.
KSL,
I think you are right about people jumping to the “What if my daughter” thinking, but that is partly because that’s what they have been fed. However, the real pro-abortion nuts don’t think in terms of that kind of tough situation. The way they talk about abortion it is more like looking at a newborn daughter and anticipating not her first words or steps but rather her first abortion. How else can you explain the lack of outrage about Gosnell?
My dad was terminally ill several years ago. (He died on 2005). His doctors were NOT treating him at all for depression. And towed the end, he was on a lot of pain and extremely depressed. He said that if he had the courage, he’d kill himself. I was scared and angry. I tried calling his doctor, who, thanks to HPPA, would not give me the time of day. He did say that he could not abet assisted suicide. Which ticked me me off even more. All I wanted was someone to treat my dad for depression.
Being an old guy turning 70 with a brother who just turned 80 I know what it is like to sit by the death bed of the older generations and send them on their way with love and prayers. Birth is not easy, life often has its rough spots and our inevitable death is not always easy and that is kind of life.
I had a 65 year old hunting buddy and friend wake up dead last week unexpectedly and for some of us that would be a nice way to go. My wife became a widow in her early 40’s when her first husband sat down to watch Monday Night football, he was the same age, and when she went in to wake him up to go to bed he was turning cold. He died of a heart attack due to complications from Hodgkin’s when he was in his 20’s and she went through some a heavy period of grief. She and I have now been married over 20 years and she thinks it only fair if she gets to die first this time around, God willing.
Some of us go easy and some like my dad in his 90’s take a lot longer, over a year to slip on away. He was sweet and thankful for the care he received and his nursing staff loved to spend time in his room even when he was blind and mostly incapacitated. He talked to folks and cared for them as they cared for him.
My mom came down with pancreatic cancer in her late 70’s and she was told that with chemo she might have an extra year or two and without it would be about three months. She thought chemo would be silly in her situation and she lasted six months and they were rough but she had style and grace and enjoyed her time with us up to the end.
I guess my contribution to this discussion is that we all have our own life story and I find the attempt to maintain a high degree of control and comfort to be a dangerous path with all sorts of pitfalls along the way. Especially if the decision is left up to others who might benefit from an accelerated time table like relatives or even society (whatever that is).
The balancing act of dignity and kindness along with the messy reality of dealing with the death of those we love should be an important part of like like birth and marriage and kids, grandkids and other events that deserve to be marked with respect and honor.
Too many times I think a lot of folks just want to treat death as if the deceased just moved away and probably won’t be coming back and that I find to be a sorry sad way to live and die.
As for Maynard and her family I respect them doing whatever they wish as long as it is legal and I think her being a lovely young lady caused the whole situation to get out of hand and. A private experience then became a media event and we are all talking about her demise, whenever that will be.
I live in a Catholic country and I get very uneasy whenever the topic of criminalizing abortion comes up. I’m a 24 year old woman, I’ve never consumed oral contraceptives because, being unmarried, I’m not sexually active yet, but also because of the deleterious side effects. Without getting into details, I will add that I also have some conditions which, as I understand discussing them with my physician, while being “minor” in a sense that they do not provoke any distress in my day to day life, also put me at greater risk for various pregnancy, birth, and post-partum complications. Otherwise I lead a calm and healthy life.
Heaven forbid, but suppose I get raped and pregnant. There are people in my country agitating for a legal model which would _force_ me to carry the pregnancy to term, with little or no regard to my physical and emotional well-being, to the fact that I had not voluntarily assumed those risks, and who, to the pain of rape, would also add the pain of unwanted difficult pregnancy, the pain of an unwanted and dangerous childbirth, its physical and psychological consequences, the incredible anguish of knowing that I have a child “somewhere out there” who I gave up for adoption. It would also imply a _legal obligation_ to forgo my other projects and priorities for the period of carrying the pregnancy to term and taking care of the physical damage post-partum. Such a legal model would essentially equal an additional torture sentence for women in such a situation: they did not choose to get pregnant, so they may not want to go through the complications of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, especially if already at risk. Or it would force them (oh the irony, in a Catholic country!) to preventively take oral contraceptives, even when not sexually active, and assume the risks of those medicaments in order to minimize the risks of getting pregnant if raped. However you look at it, it is an unjust intrusion into an innocent woman’s intimate life. I don’t think anyone has a right to force me to take “preventive” medicaments I don’t wish to take, nor that they have a right to insist that I expose myself to the complications and risks of pregnancy and birth after having been violated. The baby’s life matters, but it’s not the _only_ consideration here, not the _only_ thing that matters; slap me as “selfish”, but in a situation in which I got pregnant against my will, I find that _my_ life, health, wishes, and needs also matter, and can’t be just discarded. Nor that I should be pitied as a “collateral victim of an unfortunate situation, but whose life and health must be secondary to the baby’s”, which is essentially what these groups are agitating for: compassion, but combined with legal compulsion.
These are the first considerations that come to my mind when outlawing abortion is discussed. You may write them off as puerile and selfish, and say that _even if_ such a situation should occur, it would be morally just for me to assume those risks, to sacrifice my health (potentially my life) and not to request an abortion. I disagree; as horrific an evil as abortion is, putting me through such an ordeal of unpredictable and potentially fatal outcomes is _also_ evil, and I believe I should have the right to choose betwen two evils.
I don’t contest that abortion is a murder. I don’t engage in intellectual dishonesty of abitrary fetus/baby distinctions, from conception I recognize all as development stages of a unique human being whose life has an inherent value. Except for the rape exception, and the unfortunate cases in which abortions are medically warranted, I oppose abortion – but I feel very strongly about the rape exception. Please consider my point of view, have your daughters in mind, have other women dear to you in mind. For many of them, this isn’t theoretical, and they shouldn’t have to live with such a sword above their heads, knowing that should something already horrible happen to them, they would be sentenced to additional torture and risks, without being able to have any say in what happens.
The Japanese speak of how people lived, not when or how they died.
They once did prioritize Death over Life, via the WWII kamikazes.
It’s ironic that the side that beat them, is going back to those ideas that the West had once beat.
I won’t get into right-and-wrong here at all, just note my observations.
I’ve got lots of family going back years who always said “Just shoot me if I ever get like that.” Well, they got like that and they didn’t want to be shot; they were drifting away and becoming child-like and they had no idea they were losing their minds; they thought it was the rest of us who were talking nonsense. At some point, I guess when they felt extremely tired of life, they stopped eating and coming out of their rooms, and then slipped away.
To the survivors who continue to say “Just shoot me,” I laughingly respond, “Well, we’re not gonna do that!”
And yet I still say it myself.
The Left produces many of the rapists we see. Thus they see one of their allies as are ason why you should submit to them. That doesn’t fix the issue, because the issue is never the issue with them. Power/domination/slavery is the goal they seek, and the issue they wish for.
expat: I think most of the lack of outrage over Gosnell was due to the lack of coverage by the MSM. I remember a lot of stories about the mostly empty seats in the press section during the trial. Of course they didn’t want to report on it. Normal people would be horrified, so they chose to ignore it. One of WaPo’s reporter’s gave the excuse of it being a local crime.
Anna said:
“Heaven forbid, but suppose I get raped and pregnant. There are people in my country agitating for a legal model which would _force_ me to carry the pregnancy to term”
There is no reason the pro-life movement has to go to that extreme. Ronald Reagan the great conservative president opposed abortion except for rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother. His stance is quite easy to defend in which the welfare of women is protected while also protecting the sanctity of life. Those who go to the extremes of abortion on demand or who would force women to carry the product of rape have a much more difficult task trying to justify their stance.
Personally, I would add another exception to the ban on abortion. At times pregnancy goes awry and produces a non-viable fetus ie. anencephaly. Abortion in those cases is easy to defend morally.
The problem with assisted suicide is that it always ends up being abused. Always.
The UK’s NHS has its Liverpool Care Pathway where doctors, without the consent or knowledge of family, can end the life of a patient by withholding food and drink. As a result, they have discovered that a lot of difficult older patients (and a few mentally disabled) end up on the LCP. Worse, there was a scandal a few years ago where it was revealed that NHS bureaucrats had set up a incentive system that monetarily rewarded hospitals that met or exceeded their LCP participation. Doctors complained that they were being pressured by their employers to off more patients. Sick.
And then there’s Dr. Kevorkian her in America. Did you know that only 25% of his 69 “patients” were terminally ill?
I take Ezekiel Emanuel’s recent admission that he would not want to live past age 75 as an omen that he instead sees others past the age of 75 as not worth keeping alive. Given what we’ve seen with Obamacare so far, does anyone doubt that America could easily transition from a caring assisted suicide to institutionalized euthanasia similar to the Liverpool Care Pathway?
“As deeply respectful as I am of the faith of the religious right, I have trouble with them imposing their views on everyone else.”
If you give government the right to establish laws that govern our actions, you have granted that government the right to establish a moral standard of some sort. What moral standard should that be? who determines what is “right” and “wrong”?
How do you define “moral”?
You say that you object to the religious right imposing their morals on everyone – so what would the basis for your standards be?
suek:
I agree that law is a reflection of morals, and that it should be and must always be. The question is “whose morals?” And how far should it go, if it infringes on liberty?
Roe v. Wade managed to find the penumbra of a right to privacy on which it based the decision, for example.
The problem with calling abortion murder is that it rests on a supposition that is not universally accepted, even by the religious: that the fetus is a full human being from conception. If you think that all religions accept that proposition, you are wrong. See this for Judaism’s position, and this for the history of Christian thought on the subject.
We are not a theocracy, so in the end the question of abortion and its legality does not rest on the views of any one religion or religious group. However, whether the fetus is a full human being from conception is in essence a religious and/or philosophical question. That’s the problem; you can’t avoid religion, except by ignoring it. The other question, of course, is does a woman’s right to control her body outweigh the rights of the fetus—and whether the fetus is a full human being is certainly relevant in trying to answer that question.
That’s the conundrum. People who think it has an obvious answer in either direction are, IMHO, being simplistic.
Perhaps Neo can correct me if I’m wrong. As I understand the situation, before Roe vs. Wade the laws were directed against the abortionists not the women undergoing the abortions. Even then society recognized that the decision for a woman to have an abortion was a deeply personal and often painful decision. It was the Doctor who performed the abortion who had an obligation to help the woman cope with the problems which led her to seek an abortion who was disciplined and who would lose his/her medical license.
This would be similar to suicides today. In most states someone who attempts suicide is not prosecuted. However if someone else kills a suicidal person, especially if that suicidal person is depressed but not terminally ill, even if the suicidal person begged them to do it, the killer will probably be charged with murder.
illumnati:
Long ago woman were prosecuted for abortion, but in the 20th century that had pretty much gone by the wayside. See this article.
I have a big problem with aborting late-term babies and then shoving a knife through their spinal cord. A wanted baby who arrived early would be given every possible medical help. I don’t have too much trouble with first-trimester abortions being allowed, but I also support pro-lifers who try to offer alternatives and support. What I really hate is the way radical pro-choicers try to pretend that abortion is no big deal, certainly not big enough to forego a really good hookup. Our pop culture attitudes toward pregnancy, relationships, sickness, and death seem determined by Kim Kardashian.
Neo,
Thanks for the excellent link. I think that any discussion about the morality of abortion must take the traditional position regarding abortion into account. If abortion really equals murder then the woman should be prosecuted right along with the abortionist. The fact that this was not done shows that the traditional stance on abortion was much more nuanced.
Roe vs. Wade has polarized the debate so that both sides have moved to the extremes. The traditional approach demonstrates great wisdom.
Google wants you to live to 170. Compare that to Ezekiel Emmanuel’s wish for you: die at 75 if you live that long. That is quite a contrast. I know whose vision I have no time for.
Either “love is tenacious of life”, people are uncertain about oblivion, or fear a post-mortem moral judgment.
Illuminati:
The traditional approach distinguishes between normalization, tolerance, and rejection. It’s actually far more objective than contemporary standard that are notably selective and prone to create moral hazards. The contemporary standard reflects a progressive demand from the masses and elites alike for dissociation of moral, fiscal, and social risk. It’s really a degenerate religion proudly parading in secular clothing.
n.n.:
Why “or”? Those choices are not mutually exclusive, IMHO.
“We are not a theocracy….. “.
Exactly.
neo-neocon:
The moral issue is separable from the actual process. The “penumbra” that guided legalization of abortion rights is, in fact, an argument that protects exercise of a sincerely held faith under the First Amendment. The actual process, evolution (i.e. chaotic process), is in conflict with most but not all religions that presume to pronounce judgment on human life.
It is reasonable and scientific to assume that human life is not the product of spontaneous conception. That a human life evolves from conception to a natural, accidental, or premeditated (e.g. abortion) death. Abortion is murder in that it is a conscious act or choice to prematurely terminate a human life without cause during its evolution. It is premeditated murder in all cases, and can only be legally and morally justified in cases of self-defense.
Abortion is unique in that it is the commission or contract of premeditated murder of a wholly innocent human life when it is uniquely vulnerable. A human life without a voice to protest or arms to act in self-defense. There is no controversy that abortion is the the gross violation of human rights.
This is where the discussion needs to begin. Evolution of human life following conception is not equivalent to its evolution approaching death. Women and men need to accept responsibility for their behavior. Women and men who violate moral and legal principles need to be censured. Women do not have an extra-legal or moral right to commit murder or terminate human evolution without cause or due process. Neither women nor men have a right to devalue human life.
This issue, whether it is abortion, euthanasia, or suicide, is only complicated because dissociation of risk is an addictive opiate of both the masses and elites alike. This is only related to faith or a “penumbra” in that both masses and elites, and “atheists” and “agnostics” too, profit from the normalization of a false faith.
@Illuminati:
Most people I know hold extreme positions, either they are in favor of virtually unrestricted abortion-on-demand, no questions asked (and preferably covered by the national health insurance) OR they want to criminalize it altogether, exception granted only as an emergency procedure to save a woman’s life (i.e. they do not even admit a more generic “threat to the woman’s health” exception). I would argue that it is easier to justify either of the extreme positions than to take an in-between stance: in the former case, one only needs to claim that the woman’s authority over her own body trumps all other considerations, and in the latter case that a right to life is the primary right that trumps any “minor” rights of the third parties, such as a right not to host an unwanted guest in your body for the period of its gestation or not to sustain bodily damage as a result of it. When I present a “moderate” pro-life stance (which seems to coincide with yours and with Reagan’s), usually I am cornered as allowing for a slippery slope into a “discretionary” zone (they argue that, rapes sometimes being difficult to prove, it would allow for a possibility of a post factum “redefinition” of consentual relations as rape only to be able to get access to abortion, which would present potential further legal mess).
@neo-neocon:
Within the limits of my understanding, it’s hard to refute that a fetus is a “full” human being on biological grounds: it has a distinct DNA and presents a developmental stage of a human being which, if left uninterrupted, leads to other developmental stages of a human being, starting with babyhood. I read about the “personhood” argumentation which rests upon the idea that, fetus not being a “person”, it does not qualify for a treatment to which a “person” would be entitled, but except for the lack of a clear-cut definition of what consitutes a “person”, this argumentation potentially opens doors of eugenics, because one could equally proclaim many human beings out of the womb as not “persons” due to infermity or illness with need for life support. Another argumentation I’ve encountered is rooted in “sentience” as a criterion for moral permissibility of a killing, but most people who tie sentience to right to live do not seem to extend their reasoning to other sentient creatures (e.g. they are not vegetarians, which implicitly means that _sentience alone_ is not their full criterion) and in any case there persists an _epistemological_ problem of how do we know at what point during pregnancy fetus becomes sentient, and whether there are individual oscillations.
Personally, I’m not arguing from a religious perspective as I am a secularist (in a sense that I oppose a religious law as a basis for civil law, i.e. a theocracy), but it is interesting to see how nuanced they really are. I’ve only ever studied three religious legal systems and not with sufficient attention. In Roman law (which I studied only in its aspects relevant for civil law) a “nasciturus” (a to-be-born, i.e. a baby in the womb) could inherit, for example. There is a clause the exact wording of which I forgot, but which states something to the effect that for all succession purposes it is considered as already born. This is contradictory because abortion was premitted, but then again, the capital punishment of a woman was postponed if she was pregnant (as a disclaimer, I am writing all of this off memory and it may be inexact). In canon law, any abortion is prohibited and the practice of it results in an automatic excommunication (there are some attenuating circumstances in some cases). In Jewish religious scholarship there are indeed many sources that could be read as generally allowing abortion (and it is mandatory to save a woman’s life), but in practice most Orthodox rabbis permit it under circumstances sufficiently limited to essentially qualify as a pro-life position (I have personally discussed the issue with two Orthodox rabbis who have both held such positions). Also, if I am not gravely mistaken, a heter is needed for an abortion (heter being a sort of a “rabbinical permission” to do something _extraordinary_, as one does not need specific hetarim for _ordinary_ actions), which confers a gravity to the matter.
(By the way, if you are the owner, wonderful blog. I discovered it by accident some weeks ago, but it’s only now that I’ve dared to join in any discussion.)
neo-neocon:
You’re right. They are not mutually exclusive, and, in fact, they overlap. The only question is in what proportion each point motivates people. However, I think uncertainty is a universal consideration.
We are a theocracy. Our “liberal” culture is sculpted by both faith and religion. Just not Judeo-Christian theism or religion. The belief that there is a “separation of church and state” is a myth propagated by a competing faith and religion: atheism and libertinism, respectively.
Our “liberal” culture is sculpted by faith and religion. Just not Judeo-Christian theism or moral philosophy.
anna says:
“When I present a “moderate” pro-life stance (which seems to coincide with yours and with Reagan’s), usually I am cornered as allowing for a slippery slope into a “discretionary” zone (they argue that, rapes sometimes being difficult to prove, it would allow for a possibility of a post factum “redefinition” of consentual relations as rape only to be able to get access to abortion”
I believe any well defended pro-life position must begin with the acknowledgement that people have sovereignty over their own bodies. This is a right which is almost absolute. For instance, if you know someone else needs a blood transfusion but refuse to donate, that is not considered a crime even if the other person dies. You certainly wouldn’t be required to donate a kidney to someone else. These are well established principles. Women and their uteruses are no different. Women have the right to control their own bodies.
Any conception which is not accompanied by consensual sex is a violation of the woman’s sovereignty over her own body. That is why abortion in the case of rape is morally justified. There is no slippery slope there.
When a woman has consensual sex, she knows there is a certain risk of conception. That means that by engaging in sex the woman has already given consent to the possibility of pregnancy. By that act she has obligated herself to the new life which results from her voluntary act.
@n.n:
I understand theocracy as a legal reality in which a codified religious law serves as a basis of the legal system, where subsequent laws must be articulated in a way that is not in contrast with the “original” religious code. In a theocracy, the legal category of a crime would include (but possibly not be limited to) the religious category of a sin, and there would be limited manoeuvre as to how to discipline certain crimes, if the “original” religious code already proposes punishments.
Illuminati:
The problem with the rape exception is that the human life terminated (i.e. murdered) is wholly innocent. Abortion in this case does indeed present a slippery slope. However, the issue which should concern us is the reconciliation of principles without creating moral hazards, including construction and proliferation of paradoxes. Perhaps the best we can hope is that abortion is not normalized with this exception. This means that it will not be promoted over preferred alternatives, which do not begin with an incidence of rape.
Incidentally, it is this moral ambiguity in human rights that motivates a renewed effort to characterize men, all men, as harassers and rapists. Pro-choice (i.e. selective) women and men will present this exception as a primary consideration to preserve the legality of premeditated abortion, and thereby the progress of its normalization. It’s not that it doesn’t create a significant conundrum. It does. But that it shouldn’t direct policy prescriptions. So, pro-choice women and men argue from positions of faith and moral ambiguity, that appeal to women and men’s primitive consciences, dreams, and desires.
Iran is a theocracy. America is a democratic republic. Good grief.
@Illuminati:
“Any conception which is not accompanied by consensual sex is a violation of the woman’s sovereignty over her own body. That is why abortion in the case of rape is morally justified. There is no slippery slope there. ”
Not to play the Devil’s advocate as we are in a clear agreement, but the counter-argumentation that I get when I propose such a reasoning is about the following: what you are saying, effectively, is that different conditions of conception correspond to different extent of the right to life the baby can claim. That is, if you start from a position that the baby has a right to live, but then restrict that right in function of the conditions of conception, you are essentially arguing that the baby can be penalized for the wrongdoings of his ancestor and that if such a baby lives anyway (if the woman decides to carry the pregnancy to term), it is not by the virtue of a right to live, but by somebody else’s (the woman’s) “generous concession”, and that is a kind of concession no human being can “grant” to another human being (i.e. no human being should have the right of life and death over another human being).
To which I reply: but I didn’t _choose_ to have the baby inside me, I can’t be held equally morally responsible for its further life or well-being as somebody who took the risk of pregnancy consciously. And then I draw your analogy with body parts donation.
To which they reply: but it’s a false analogy because it’s already there (while in a case of not wanting to donate body parts you are simply refraining from any positive action), and even if there was no positive action on your part to _get_ the baby there, your positive action will be a murder. We have a contrast between two rights, yours to your bodily autonomy and the baby’s to life, and nobody is disputing that your rights have previously been violated, but these two rights are of a different order, so regardless of how the baby got inside of you, it claims a greater and a more important right than you do.
At which point I can’t take it anymore _emotionally_, but I’m not sure I have a good _intellectual_ answer to that (maybe you can help me with that, I’ve tried to reconstruct the way I get cornered). Rape is a part of our anthropological reality, it has always existed and unfortunately, when done to women, it carries the risk of impregnation (with all the pain and risks springing from that). I’d like to find a consistent pro-life argumentation which would allow for a rape exception.
Anna said:
“you are saying, effectively, is that different conditions of conception correspond to different extent of the right to life the baby can claim.”
That is correct. There are two innocent victims of the rape, the raped woman and the fetus. The fetus has been placed into the womb of a woman against her will and thus it has no legitimate claim on her. If she terminates the pregnancy the moral responsibility for the fetal death (murder if you will) goes to the rapist.
The death of a fetus because the raped woman refuses to donate the use of her uterus to sustain it is not materially different than the death of a patient who needs a bond marrow transplant but the only known potential tissue donor refuses.
“To which they reply: but it’s a false analogy because it’s already there”
So it is already there. So what? The analogy is just an example to try to break through the other person’s moral blindness. The argument itself is not based on analogy. It is the application of a well accepted moral principle that people have sovereignty over their own bodies even if someone else dies as the result.
I have mixed feelings about all of this. I have an incurable, progressive disease whose effects have been slowed but I’m still going gradually downhill. I don’t want to end up shitting myself in a hospice while indifferent to malign caregivers give me normal saline instead of morphine sulphate and I have nowhere to turn.
Suicide seems an entirely reasonable alternative to such an outcome.
I’m not anywhere close to that yet. But I can imagine things moving in that direction in a few years.
However, I still feel like I have things I’d like to accomplish in my field. (I write fiction, I’m a “cult” author who still has a readership. And my cognition remains unimpaired.)
We’ll see.
miklos:
I very much hope that the slowness of the progression of your disease means that they find a way to treat, delay the worsening, or cure your disease before things get really bad.
neo,
Thank you. Through “the Assistance Fund” I’ve been able to obtain the beta intereron 1a I inject myself with each week (not without side-effects), which otherwise would cost an utterly unaffordable $17,000/month.
The Oregon Health Plan at one point ran out of money and that was it, goodbye, been nice knowing you pal — it was impossible to get anyone on the phone and the downtown office was actually closed. Just like that.
The evil big pharmaceutical company, on the other hand, Biogen, gave me quite a few shots for free and said they would work with me until we got the matter covered. And they did.
People magazine is reporting that she went ahead.
Autist; yes, it is on Fox News and CNN as well; she has taken her own life.
May she and her family now be at peace.
This came to my mind as I read about Brittany slipping away. A little bit of E. A. Poe
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling–my darling–my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea–
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
That is terribly terribly sad.
Weirdly, I think one of the saddest death-scenes in any film is in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, when Dave is unplugging HAL the computer, and HAL in his barely-inflected monotone says:
Stop. Dave.
Dave.
Please stop.
I can feel it.
I can feel it.
Dave.
Please stop.
I’m afraid.
Autist:
For better or worse her life was her choice. Society’s interest is to prevent normalization of this choice (e.g. dysfunctional behaviors) and to confront its causes when it represents a progressive condition in the population.
As for “terminally ill”, life is a chaotic process. We only know two things about the process with any rational certainty: source (i.e. conception) and sink (i.e. death). Otherwise, it’s only possible to estimate, not predict, but forecast the process in limited frames of reference (i.e. scientific domain).
Illuminati:
The sovereignty of your own body ends with the sovereignty of another body. The only exception is when sovereignty is exclusive in cases of self-defense. This is not to diminish the moral ambiguity of your argument, but to state plainly that it is a false analogy, and does not resolve the paradox. In the case of impregnation during rape, there is still one wholly innocent human life, and one victim. Abortion of the child creates another victim. This choice needs to be discussed and reconciled in order to avoid creating further moral hazards. It cannot be swept away with false statements of equivalence. Society and the individual need to accept responsibility for their choice.
That said, this exceptional situation should not serve as a prescription for a policy. The ulterior motives of pro-abortion/choice advocates to paint men as rapists in order to exploit this moral ambiguity should be exposed. Their agenda only serves to avoid addressing the causes, which is typical of people with selective principles. The issue is first and foremost a popular and political culture that promotes dysfunctional human relationships.
America is not a democratic republic. America is a constitutional republic. A theocracy is governance with an established religion and faith. America has an established religion or moral philosophy: progressive liberalism. It has an established faith or principles defended in a universal or extra-universal domain. Our constitutional republic only prevents a traditional theocracy, but in practice it cannot and did not prevent establishment of a religion or moral philosophy. The people who cite “separation of church and state” are only concerned about the establishment of a competing religion, not their religion that is notably authoritarian.
n.n Says:
“The sovereignty of your own body ends with the sovereignty of another body. The only exception is when sovereignty is exclusive in cases of self-defense. This is not to diminish the moral ambiguity of your argument, but to state plainly that it is a false analogy, and does not resolve the paradox.”
n.n., I don’t follow your argument. When someone outside the uterus makes claims on the body of someone else against their will you recognize that the second person has the right to defend themselves. Why is it any different when a woman’s uterus is involved?
n.n: I agree that it was her life and, therefore, her choice, but it’s still a tragedy.
Why is it any different when a woman’s uterus is involved?
Both the woman and the fetus are merely tools for Gosnell and Leftist abortion for profit Doctor Class authorities.
It has always been thus, and it always will, for a population that years for slavery while thinking themselves free.
Please, what I do with my life is my business and pose no impositions on others. We are all different with different values and veiws. I want the government to stop saying they know what I want and need. What I want is to stop supporting the burocrates that keep interfering with my healthcare and daily life. I do not want to suffer and I do not want others to pay for my suffering. If I want an abortion from a rape or incest., that is my decision. We are free for now , however we are headed to a socialist society.