| Geoff,
Interesting but I don't buy it - I am ambivalent as you are, after all it's not like I didn't want to commit suicide before & wasn't happy afterwards that I didn't (it's really interesting to observe that the person wanting to commit suicide would've deprived the person that's happy now of a life, we're not one & the same person throughout our lifes).
Nevertheless, I don't buy it since this is (if one accepts to some extent a right to die outside of traditional euthanasia debates) primordially a procedure debate, & the process background you sketch doesn't cut it in my opinion.
The right to live is essentially a right not to be killed. It does not infer any right to do as you please with your life as is shown clearly by the actual legal treatment of suicide.
On the same basis, the right to die would essentially be the right to decide to stop living. True, a number of things you say on such a right needing to be ensured as not degrading into a license to convince people to commit suicide, is pertinent. It's however necessary in my view to elaborate such measures in the context of right to die. Elaborating them in the context of the right to live will be messy for reasons as quoted above.
Sorry to throw the book a bit but I am convinced that one needs to be very clean in this type of thing. Also because - mainly because - the right to die would, in fact, lead to alleviation of many societal issues such as increasing spending in pension & social security.
GuidoNius |