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I think you mean "IN-alienable" right, but you have a good question:  Why should a burden of inconvenience fall on the person preferring death to life?  

There are a number of ways to respond and think about that question, but a simple way to start is to ask what are your underlying assumptions?  It appears that you are assuming that providing a legal right to die to some people has zero impact on others who would prefer to live under the same, hopeless circumstances. That is, a right to die is independent of a right to live, even if both rights can be traced somehow to the flowery language of the US Declaration of Independence. I question that assumption because it appears to directly contradict everything else we (meaning most people who visit this site regularly) have already implicitly or explicitly professed to believe about how the world works. Namely, we progressives reject the neoclassical assumption of individual omnipotence and omniscience when making choices and acting on them, which underlie all arguments for greater privatization and a very minor role for the state in capitalist society.  

Instead we accept the institutional critique which underlies most "progressive" intellectual endeavors, such as feminism, critical theory, and most "pro-state" ways of approaching economics and other social sciences. In our framework for thinking, individuals have very limited power and knowledge about the world, so their choices are inherently biased by the language and institutional contexts in which they find themselves. "Bounded rationality" is the technical term for how progressive thinkers believe the world works.

So, if you don't believe that free-market economics is the default solution to a social problems such as inequitable distribution of medical care, then you are implicitly rejecting the idea that a truly individual choice to die is even possible.  An individual's options are necessarily bounded by the possibilities presented to that individual by language, values, and other social structures. (That's the essence of the progressive argument against Laissez-faire capitalism.) And if that is the case, then just changing a law to make death a socially acceptable option for hopelessly ill people must also affect, most likely negatively, the ability of similarly hopeless people to choose the socially more inconvenient path of living longer while burdening the community.

Put more simply, I don't believe that the myth of individualism is true. Individual welfare, everywhere and anywhere, is mostly dependent upon relationships with the larger community in which one finds oneself, and inalienable rights are one form of such a relationship in our current, rights-based political institutions.  Therefore, it's not possible to assume that a right to die is independent of a right to live. Rather a right to die necessarily diminishes a right to live, and vice versa.  

And this means, as I said elsewhere in this thread, that legal suicide is simply incompatible with social medicine. It might be compatible with a completely private system of medical care, the Laissez-faire utopia, but I don't believe such a utopia is possible, and you probably don't either.

by santiago on Wed Feb 10th, 2010 at 02:41:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]
That is right, I meant inalienable! Thank you!

As for the rest of your argument, while I can certainly see why you are worried that providing the legal  basis for terminally ill people to end their lives may have negative impact and prove counterproductive for people just as sick but not willing to stop fighting the disease(s) and die, I am struggling to see the rationality in arguments that advocate the widespread conviction that if one is suffering from immense pain and there is no hope for them, they should nevertheless be stuffed with all kinds of medicines and kept alive at all cost for the sake of not letting them die even if that be their wish!

by hitchhiker on Thu Feb 11th, 2010 at 09:59:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
You already have the right to refuse treatment - including life-saving and -extending treatment.

The right to refuse medical interventions has been on the books since the Nürnberg Declaration in 1947. Which came about... for obvious historical reasons, shall we say.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Feb 11th, 2010 at 11:04:54 AM EST
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