GIGO I: Right to Privacy: Suicide
Re: Welsey Smith on assisted suicide at NRO in Dying Cause.
There are many people who believe that the rights of the individual reign supreme. For example, a mother's right to her body gives her the right to destroy the living human being in her womb. A natural extension of this privacy right would be -- and this holds true as far as I've observed -- the right to kill oneself. Thus the logic goes: a man should able to partake in a "medical" procedure on his body that will result in death (his), just as a woman is able to partake in a "medical" procedure on her body that will result in death (her unborn human child).
I don't put individual rights on the same high pedestal as others do. I'm not a libertarian. I've never pretended to be a libertarian. I instantly recognized libertarianism as flawed as modern liberalism as soon as I became aware of that term and understood what it meant. It's a simple ideology that will fail in a complex world. I don't hate libertarians (I consider them to be on the Right, not the Left side of the aisle), but they will fail to capture my imagination because their ideology is not anchored -- however much they might claim to be the heirs of classical liberalism.
I believe there are Transcendent Laws that place boundaries on the Rights of the Individual. As such the Right to Death does not spring forth from the Right to Life.
Posted by Bob at May 22, 2003 07:15 PM