Supreme Court On Suicide

[Meta Blog]

Originally from The Charlotte Capitalist ™,

Since 1997 Oregon physicians have been permitted by statute to help their patients commit suicide. On Tuesday the Supreme Court upheld this controversial law, reaching the right result for the wrong reasons. By basing its decision on legal technicalities, the Court managed to avoid addressing the real issue: an individual's unconditional right to commit suicide.

More from Tom Bowden at The American Chronicle here. Am I pro-suicide? Uhhh...No. Do I defend the right of the individual to make his or her own decisions about their life in the context of individual and property rights? Yes.

The Catholic response:

Physician-assisted suicide is not an act that directly ends the suffering of a patient. Rather, this act deliberately takes the life of a person who receives his or her life as a gift from God. Physician-assisted suicide represents a fundamental violation of this gift and of human dignity.

Translation: "It's not your life. It's God's." Sounds like Terry Schiavo all over again. No matter how bad someone's life is, it must be sustained."

Tom adds:

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself. This basic truth--which finds political expression in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--means, in practical terms, that you need no one's permission to live and that no one may forcibly obstruct your efforts to achieve your own personal happiness.

But what if happiness becomes impossible to attain? What if a dread disease, or some other calamity, drains all joy from life, leaving only misery and suffering? The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise--to declare that society or God must give you permission to kill yourself--is to contradict the right to life at its root. If you have a duty to go on living, despite your better judgment, then your life does not belong to you, and you exist by permission, not by right.

Thanks Tom.

[AisA]

Physician-assisted suicide is not an act that directly ends the suffering of a patient.

If this is true, it can only mean that god maintains the patient's suffering even after death; you will suffer as long as god wants you to suffer and not a damn minute less. How compassionate.