Some remaining thoughts on this week's popular discussion thread:
Drum's critique of Douthat's column is legitimate. Douthat is certainly taking a religiously-held opinion and distilling it in such a way that it might become suitable for broad public consumption.
The religious reason for this is easy. You do not own your life. It is a gift from God that you did nothing to earn. And ultimately, it is His to take away, not yours. Taking it yourself is a final act of arrogance and the attempt to take that kind of control over life in general is akin to that deadliest of sins, Pride, whereby you view yourself as nearly equal to God and wise enough to judge that ending a 35,000-day life two days early will have no effect on the world.
But I think there is a secular argument to be made.
Do we truly own our lives? Or aren't they indeed shared in the vast matrix of social interactions and familial connections? I really don't buy the argument that this is done to ease suffering. Morphine eases suffering. This is about an imagined dignity where people have a right to hit the escape button so that people they care about don't see them drooling or losing control of their bowel movements. Rather than ending intense pain, it's closer in aspect to the fashion model in the movie "Seven" who commits suicide after having her nose cut off rather than live with a disfigured face.
Another writes:
I can appreciate the arguments in favor of assisted suicide/euthanasia. What I can't appreciate is how folks like Dan Savage or Kevin Drum are so totally and reflexively dismissive of any and all objections to it. The reality is that if assisted suicide/euthanasia is legalized and normalized, people will kill themselves for reasons that have nothing to do with good health or personal dignity.
They'll kill themselves due to financial pressures. They'll kill themselves because of societal or family pressures, explicit or inadvertent. They'll kill themselves out of loneliness. They'll kill themselves out of motivations that would disappear in a month or a week or a day. There is no way to have a system or rules of assisted suicide/euthanasia where that won't happen.
How many would needlessly die? I don't know. Maybe not that many. But how many have to die because Dan Savage suffered a personal tragedy? How many have to be sacrificed on Kevin Drum's aetheistic altar of autonomy?
Another:
I'm not in pain, and I'm able to be up-and-about most of the time. I live in somewhat pleasant circumstances, but I'm old (82) and simply tired of all the routines of living that are increasingly difficult to handle. All of my orifices leak. I drool, my eyes water, my nose runs and the lower two places don't always cooperate either.
For the most part I've had a good life. I made my contributions as a teacher and school administrator, but I'm way past my prime and as far as I can determine, I serve no good purpose. I'm a comfortable agnostic and am willing to take my chances on whatever comes next; if it's another life, okay; but if not, that's okay too. Believe me, if there were some sure way of ending my life without creating a mess for someone to clean up, or of merely damaging myself and having even less control of myself, I'd go for it in a second.
This is why assisted suicide is so important. Why do I have to wait until I'm even less in control or in pain? And who's to say that an intelligent person shouldn't be able to know when it's time for him to say farewell?
The Dish 