Remember Terri Schiavo? How about Karen Ann Quinlan? How about Baby K?
This “debate” on procon.org presents the “slippery slope” angle on euthanasia. The slippery slope argument generally goes something like this: If you allow “voluntary euthanasia”, then the government will use that allowance as a foot in the door to begin taking the lives of others without their consent.
Um… does anybody know about that thing… Oh, what’s it called?!… CAPITAL PUNISHMENT?!
Isn’t Capital Punishment simply de facto Involuntary Euthanasia? The government already has the power to end the life of a person without his or her consent. It is to be done in a way that is neither cruel, nor unusual, but it does deprive someone of his or her life.
And, don’t forget, we as pet owners have the right to euthanize our pets; that is, to mercifully end their suffering (or our own).
If you can back away from human exceptionalism for a second and look at life in general, you’ll see that we, all of us, kill. Either directly or by proxy, we all kill. Most of us kill plants by proxy with the aid of farmers, lumberjacks, groundskeepers and others. Some of us kill plants directly (ever heard of RoundUp?) If you eat, wear or use anything made from animal carcasses (other than carrion… and who does THAT?!), you’re killing animals, either yourself, or by proxy. As unpleasant a fact as it may be to face, we all kill humans, mostly by proxy (wars and capital punishment leap to mind), but the blood is already on our hands.
Lets face it: Life depends on death. Only the simplest organisms can survive without a supply of nutrients concentrated and modified by other living things (for a pedantic discussion of this, see Disney’s “The Lion King”.
Another unpleasant fact: Whether you believe in Evolution by Natural Selection or not, all you have to do is look around a little to realize that there is a tendency in nature (and among humans) for living things to reproduce more rapidly than their environment can directly support. Rabbits breed like rabbits, after all… and Catholics breed like… well… like rabbits. Rabbits and Catholics (and many other species, breeds, ethnic groups, religious groups and so on), if left to their devices, with no predators (or other mediating forces), eventually overtake the ability of their environment to support them. The good news (although you may have difficulty seeing it) for the rabbits is that there are foxes, coyotes and wolves to pick off the old and weak, and allow the healthy and strong (lest we forget quick) bunnies to go on and, well.. breed like rabbits. (An entertaining, if horrifying, study on this is Mike judge’s 2005 film Idiocracy.)
Human “compassion” (fueled in no small part by religion-induced “morality”) has turned the bulk of us into selfishly “compassionate” “moral” martyrs, emotionally thriving on the sympathy and admiration other like-minded wackos shower us with when we choose to keep a Schiavo or a Quinnlan or a Baby K “alive”. it’s really not all that different, in my estimation, from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, but with an extra twist of delusional madness.
Of course, there’s also the Futile Medical Care issue.
..oh, and a little matter of Cruelty.
…and here’s the kicker: The bulk of the people fighting voluntary euthanasia seem to be doing so from a position of religious rectitude. Well…. The bulk of religions (at least those practiced by more than 8 individuals in this country) tell of a fabulous afterlife (for the “good ones”, anyway). Now, if your deity of choice landed in a sand trap in his/her attempt to call Terri Schiavo (to take a well know example… anyone in a similar condition would do) to heaven, rescussitating her and putting her on life support is like erecting a tall Plexiglas barrier around the sand trap, so the the deity’s ball can’t advance. This, of course, is interfering with god’s work, and denying the poor woman her greater reward.
Of course, I don’t belive in gods or heavens or hells or angels or devils or unicorns… so… the “greater reward” argument is just a use of the goddy-people’s argument to demolish it from within. Really, tho… I do it out of love.
