Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
I think on this point you differ from many of the people that were so upset about this case. I don't think Delay and friends really cared if she expressed a desire to die. From their perspective only God can decide if some one should die and therefore humans should do everything they can to protect and preserve life under all circumstances. Actually with Delay it is just innocent life (he is a pro-death penalty protestant) but with Catholics like Jeb Bush, it is all life, even non-innocent life.
I think these people have fallen prey to the slippery slope argument. They fear that if you let someone who is in intense pain to choose to die that this could lead to a culture of death and pretty soon you will have another holocaust. That is why you should not make decisions on what is just or unjust based on fear. I think everyone deep down believes that if someone lives everyday in intense pain, and there is no hope that the pain will ever stop, that they should be allowed to end their own life. I think peoples fear (like their fear of homosexuals) prevents them from seeing what is truly just and right in these circumstances.
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I am in agreement with pretty much everything you wrote. I respect where Jeb was coming from but it is not where I was coming from one. I am fine with assisted suicide if the assistee is making a conscous decision. I am fine with a living will that directs the plug or feeding tube to be pulled. I am not down with judicial interpetation of someone's wishes based on hearsay, even if it is the husband providing it. A spouse is not chattel. In the case, as W said, they should have erred on the side of life. Instead the state was complicit in murder.
What does the state say if the husband on his death were to say, "guess what, I lied. Suckers!". Err on the side of life, not in favour of a culture of death.
All that said, I have evolved to being against the death penalty. What happened in Illinois and elsewhere points to strongly that this is another area to "err", so to speak, on the side of life. Life imprisonment works for me......except for enemy combatants and treasoners, those filthy bastards aren;t worth the waste of time the due process considerations take.
