Poverty Is Not an Accident

Poverty Is Not an Accident
Nelson Mandela

Sunday, February 20, 2011

end of life choices

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I'm not prone to appreciate any time the State becomes involved in intimate, personal decisions: marriage, gender assignment, reproductive rights, health and medical decisions, death. I'm very Libertarian in this view: people need to decide what is right FOR THEM, without pressure or need for approval from the State. The State's role in right to die issues is ONLY to assure that the individual is NOT being exploited, abused, etc. and that the facilities are sterile and operated by trained personnel.

Kevorkian's operations, even assisting suicides out of his VAN!, set the right to die movement back twenty years.

I absolutely believe each person has the right to choose end of life.

But I have qualifiers here, too.

I ABSOLUTELY do NOT trust psychiatry; it's turned into sanctimonious pill pushers under the influence of Big PhRMA lobbyists. So, I don't know who or how this would be done, but we must make sure the person chosing end of life is not suffering from major depression or some other altered state that will pass with time, support and alternative ways of thinking about life.

I also am a disability rights advocate. There's a LOT of discrimination against people with disabilities. Often, when one finds oneself traumatically disabled, one thinks one's life is over, that one will never be useful, productive, contributing, etc. again. And one wants to die. With few exceptions, people with traumatic disabilities need to be encouraged to find new capabilities, beyond the trauma and learn to advocate for their own quality of life, rights to retrain, rights to housing, employment, health care, a physical world they can negotiate without barriers, etc.

So, a State operated euthanasia program is off the table for me. A program by which people can choose end of life with dignity, without being criminalized, that is operated within the State's guidelines for ANY medical care, is fine with me.

I have planned my own end of life. It will not involve any other people. If I can do it, I will just disappear into the desert and the critters can feast on me. I believe in recycling, too

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