The right to die...

In other news, the SCOTUS is hearing a case revolving around an Oregon law making legal the right of a person to authorize a doctor assisted suicide.

There are a number of arguments on this issue on both sides of the debate. Most are knee-jerk reactionaries, but I'll explain my thinking on the issue very simply with a series of logical steps that lead me to only one possible conclusion.

Instead of trying to prove why a person should be allowed to receive assistance from a medical professional to end his own life, I will show why he should not be prevented from doing so. While equivalent to one another, the latter is much easier to demonstrate with existing law and sound logic rather than the emotion needed to illustrate the former.

In a country founded on the ideals of individual liberty and limited government, certainly the logical premise must be that any person wishing to end his own life by his own hand may do so.

Premise #1: A person may legally choose to end his own life in America.

Having established that a person may legally kill himself, attention turns to whether or not one person may legally kill another person under any circumstance. Of course, the answer is yes. Military personnel are trained to kill, and police officers are taught how to injure or kill in the event such actions become necessary. State agents are licensed to kill when criminal defendants have been sentenced to execution in courts of law. Using deadly force in defense of self or others against criminals in the act of threatening the life, liberty or property of another person has also long since been accepted as solid legal ground.

Premise #2: There are acceptable legal bases for one person to deliberately murder another.

In fact, in the above mentioned cases, the victim of the murder isn't even dying by his own choice.

America has long since operated on the notion of free markets in which buyers and sellers freely engage in economic transactions. In this case, the buyer would be the individual who wishes to end his life and the seller would be the doctor who carries out the act.

So, I've established that a free person ought to have the right to end his own life as he so chooses. Deliberately ending the life of another person is very much acceptable under our justice system in certain circumstances, and therefore it would follow that a free market system in which individuals engage with one another in order to match supply with demand, those who demand to end their own lives ought be free to receive services from someone willing to provide them.

Hypothetically speaking, what happens if assisted suicide remains illegal, and somebody who wants to die but is unable to do so decides that he will commit a crime and plead guilty to state sanctioned murder or "death by police"?

Who objects to legalizing assisted suicide?

1. The right to life crowd (many of whom support war and the death penalty) who see this as another brick in the wall of support for abortion. Of course, such a viewpoint is hysterical as assisted suicide implies a choice whereas unborn babies cannot make choices about their intent or desire to live or die.

2. Those who think that federal law prohibits such a practice according to the canons of medical ethics. I cannot find the relevant section of the Constitution that authorizes the federal government to dictate how its citizens should conduct their lives so long as the behavior does not violate the rights of other people, including what constitutes appropriate medical treatment. Thus, unless assisted suicide harms the right to life, liberty or property of others, I would conclude that anyone who invokes the supremacy clause within the framework of this debate actually has proven the inverse according to the 9th and 10th amendments.

I heard Rush Limbaugh today make the case that a "right" to life is essentially an "obligation" to live, as if someone cannot refuse chemotherapy or open heart surgery if he so chooses.

Also, Rush said that the Constitution prevents people from determining the course of their own destiny because it doesn't explicitly state that the people retain such a right. Of course, as with most Americans, he reads the 9th and 10th amendments backwards (if at all) when it suits his personal agenda.

Since the Constitution doesn't preclude individuals from carrying out their own death as they so choose, the States and/or People retain all such rights.

Do we have some sort of obligation to keep people alive who wish to die? Who pays the medical bills of people who are stuck in hospitals unable to choose to end their own lives yet unable to carry out the act of suicide?

How can the people of this country permit our government to murder people at Waco or Ruby Ridge who presumably wanted to live, and who received no due process in a court of law, yet deny those who wish to end their lives with dignity and in peace at a time of their choosing?

Overall, the focal point of the issue seems to be whether or not the sole determination as to who lives and who dies shall be made by politicians in Washington D.C.

In the end, I must respect the wishes of the People of Oregon, and the right of each to do as they wish so long as they refrain from infringing upon the rights of anyone but himself.