It seems like, in some cases, throwing up our hands and saying "It's not my call" is a sort of moral abdication.
Imagine you find a teenage girl in a bathtub, bleeding out from a suicide attempt. Who would stand there and say, "Well, you know, it's her decision." Such indifference would be depraved; saving her would be praiseworthy.
A less dramatic case would be a juror asked to determine guilt under an unjust law. "Who am I to say whether a law is just?" Who would you be if you _didn't_?
That's the door through which the reactionary, anti-science hordes flooded the libertarian movement and the Libertarian Party.
Can a liberal really think that physician-assisted suicide is a tragedy, that pornograpy is a symptom of moral decay, that vaccines are unsafe, or that the state should take no position when a gay couple walks into a business hoping to order a wedding cake, and the proprietor rejects their business for what amounts to an irrational reason?
I think this is where liberalism might just break down. (Luckily we are not in need of strict consistency because strict consistency is never going to be possible.) I think reasonable people are reasonably open to those who, on the brink of imminent death or decline, or in the throes of untreatable pain, choose to end their lives. This was how the Canadian system seemed to work until it got more lax. Here state sanction enhances options by not penalizing doctors if no other treatment is effective and this is seen as the best medical course of action. This is allowing the state to allow professionals to assist the patient in this choice, when all others are exhausted. And that reasonable people are so open, means that they see that these situations are the exceptions to a general rule, which is that people who are otherwise healthy and suicidal should not be encouraged and should be counseled against it, as with other self-destructive behaviors, even if, at some point in the process, you realize that there is nothing you are ever going to be able to do to prevent them from going through with it eventually. This option to counsel others to prevent self-harm was always within Mill's view. It's not illiberal to do so. It might, however, be illiberal to curtail this option. And that's what the state sanction seems to do, to some extent. But even if not strictly illiberal, it might, as I said, just be where liberalism breaks down.
You might have a better case if you were talking about private acts of suicide. Suicides might arguably have a right to end their lives, even when they shouldn't. And other people will say, maybe so, but I will intervene to convince them not to do so. Why should the state interfere with these private interactions? If it is something you would want to do when the person is taking matters into their own hands, why use state power to prevent such recourse when the act is sanctioned by the state, why use state power to sanction, normalize, aid, and effectively (on the margins) encourage suicide in those cases that diverge from the aforementioned medical dilemmas?
It seems like, in some cases, throwing up our hands and saying "It's not my call" is a sort of moral abdication.
Imagine you find a teenage girl in a bathtub, bleeding out from a suicide attempt. Who would stand there and say, "Well, you know, it's her decision." Such indifference would be depraved; saving her would be praiseworthy.
A less dramatic case would be a juror asked to determine guilt under an unjust law. "Who am I to say whether a law is just?" Who would you be if you _didn't_?
Yea, that last paragraph concerns me.
That's the door through which the reactionary, anti-science hordes flooded the libertarian movement and the Libertarian Party.
Can a liberal really think that physician-assisted suicide is a tragedy, that pornograpy is a symptom of moral decay, that vaccines are unsafe, or that the state should take no position when a gay couple walks into a business hoping to order a wedding cake, and the proprietor rejects their business for what amounts to an irrational reason?
I can't see it.
I think this is where liberalism might just break down. (Luckily we are not in need of strict consistency because strict consistency is never going to be possible.) I think reasonable people are reasonably open to those who, on the brink of imminent death or decline, or in the throes of untreatable pain, choose to end their lives. This was how the Canadian system seemed to work until it got more lax. Here state sanction enhances options by not penalizing doctors if no other treatment is effective and this is seen as the best medical course of action. This is allowing the state to allow professionals to assist the patient in this choice, when all others are exhausted. And that reasonable people are so open, means that they see that these situations are the exceptions to a general rule, which is that people who are otherwise healthy and suicidal should not be encouraged and should be counseled against it, as with other self-destructive behaviors, even if, at some point in the process, you realize that there is nothing you are ever going to be able to do to prevent them from going through with it eventually. This option to counsel others to prevent self-harm was always within Mill's view. It's not illiberal to do so. It might, however, be illiberal to curtail this option. And that's what the state sanction seems to do, to some extent. But even if not strictly illiberal, it might, as I said, just be where liberalism breaks down.
You might have a better case if you were talking about private acts of suicide. Suicides might arguably have a right to end their lives, even when they shouldn't. And other people will say, maybe so, but I will intervene to convince them not to do so. Why should the state interfere with these private interactions? If it is something you would want to do when the person is taking matters into their own hands, why use state power to prevent such recourse when the act is sanctioned by the state, why use state power to sanction, normalize, aid, and effectively (on the margins) encourage suicide in those cases that diverge from the aforementioned medical dilemmas?
This is an article about an abomination of "bioethics": https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canada-medical-aid-in-dying