George F. Will and Jon Will

Poststructural Pub
1

In 1993, I read this remarkable piece in Newsweek by George F. Will. Remarkable for how personal it is for Mr. Will. Remarkable for profound insight into the subject matter. It’s surfaced, at last, on the Internet. Here it is:

Jon Will’s Aptitudes
by George F. Will

Jon Will, the oldest of my four children, turns 21 this week and on this birthday, as on every other workday, he will commute by subway to his job delivering mail and being useful in other ways at the National Institutes of Health. Jon is a taxpayer, which serves him right: He voted for Bill Clinton (although he was partial to Pat Buchanan in the primaries).

The fact that Jon is striding into a productive adulthood with a spring in his step and Baltimore’s Orioles on his mind is a consummation that could not have been confidently predicted when he was born. Then a doctor told his parents that their first decision must be whether or not to take Jon home. Surely 21 years later fewer doctors suggest to parents of handicapped newborns that the parental instinct of instant love should be tentative or attenuated, or that their commitment to nurturing is merely a matter of choice, even a question of convenience.

Jon has Down syndrome, a chromosomal defect involving varying degrees of mental retardation and physical abnormalities. Jon lost, at the instant he was conceived, one of life’s lotteries, but he also was lucky: His physical abnormalities do not impede his vitality and his retardation is not so severe that it interferes with life’s essential joys – receiving love, returning it, and reading baseball box scores.

One must mind one’s language when speaking of people like Jon. He does not “suffer from” Down syndrome. It is an affliction, but he is happy – as happy as the Orioles’ stumbling start this season will permit. You may well say that being happy is easy now that ESPN exists. Jon would agree. But happiness is a species of talent, for which some people have superior aptitudes.

Jon’s many aptitudes far exceed those few that were dogmatically ascribed to people like him not long ago. He was born when scientific and social understanding relevant to him was expanding dramatically. We know much more about genetically based problems than we did when, in the early 1950s, James Watson and Francis Crick published their discoveries concerning the structure of DNA, the hereditary molecule, thereby beginning the cracking of the genetic code. Jon was born the year before Roe v. Wade and just as prenatal genetic tests were becoming routine. Because of advancing science and declining morals, there are less people like Jon than there should be. And just in Jon’s generation much has been learned about unlocking the hitherto unimagined potential of the retarded. This begins with early intervention in the form of infant stimulation. Jon began going off to school when he was three months old.

Because Down syndrome is determined at conception and leaves its imprint on every cell of the person’s body, it raises what philosophers call ontological questions. It seems mistaken to say that Jon is less than he would be without Down syndrome. When a child suffers a mentally limiting injury after birth we wonder sadly what might have been. But a Down person’s life never had any other trajectory. Jon was Jon from conception on. He has seen a brother two years younger surpass him in size, get a driver’s license and leave for college, and although Jon would be forgiven for shaking his fist at the universe, he has been equable. I believe his serenity is grounded in his sense that he is a complete Jon and that is that.

Some of life’s pleasures, such as the delights of literature, are not accessible to Jon, but his most poignant problem is that he is just like everyone else, only a bit more so. A shadow of loneliness, an irreducible apartness from other, is inseparable from the fact of individual existence. This entails a sense of incompleteness – we are social creatures – that can be assuaged by marriage and other friendships, in the intimacy of which people speak their hearts and minds. Listen to the wisdom whispered by common locutions: We speak of “unburdening ourselves” when we talk with those whom we talk most freely.

Now, try to imagine being prevented, by mental retardation and by physical impediments to clear articulation, from putting down, through conversation, many burdens attendant on personhood. The shadow of loneliness must often be somewhat darker, the sense of apartness more acute, the sense of incompleteness more aching for people like Jon. Their ability to articulate is, even more that for everyone else, often not commensurate with their abilities to think and feel, to be curious and amused, and to yearn.

Because of Jon’s problems of articulation, I marvel at his casual everyday courage in coping with a world that often is uncomprehending . He is intensely interested in major league baseball umpires, and is a friend of a few of them. I think he is fascinated by their ability to make themselves understood, by vigorous gestures, all the way to the back row of the bleachers. From his season-ticket seat behind the Orioles dugout, Jon relishes rhubarbs, but I have never seen him really angry. The closest he comes is exasperation leavened by resignation. It is an interesting commentary on the human condition that one aspect of Jon’s abnormality – a facet of his disability – is the fact that he is gentleness straight through. But must we ascribe a sweet soul to a defective chromosome? Let us just say that Jon is an adornment to a world increasingly stained by anger acted out.

Like many handicapped people, Jon frequently depends on the kindness of strangers. He almost invariably receives it, partly because Americans are, by and large, nice, and because Jon is, too. He was born on his father’s birthday, a gift that keeps on giving.

2

This is one of the reasons I (and, I daresay, George Will) are Republicans.

In the early 80s, Down Syndrome newborns, like Jon, were being starved to death in American hospitals. Such children are sometimes born with easily correctable anomalies that prevent them from eating and drinking, a malformed esophagus or intestinal blockage, for instance. Physicians in such cases began to suggest ‘conservative treatment.’ What this meant is that the parents, wishing to be rid of the newborn, would refuse consent for the routine surgery that would correct the anomaly; also they would refuse consent for intravenous food and water. In short, physicans and parents seized the opportunity to starve the child to death; this took weeks, sometimes. These were called ‘Baby Doe’ cases.

In some of these cases nurses went to court to get custody taken from the parents, as would automatically be done in the case of Christian Scientists’ children with the same anomalies. However the courts consistently ruled that there was ‘no evidence of neglect.’ The pro-life community opposed this (along with major organizations for the handicapped) in the most practical way it could–on the day the Bloomington IN child starved to death in hospital (intestinal blockage), twelve families were trying to adopt him.

It was the ‘woman’s right to choose’ leaping the gap between unborn and born, as had been expected. And the leap happened in just the place expected, handicapped newborns, who have always been targeted for infanticide (followed by girls). And the pro-choice organizations began to line up as expected. Advocates for legal euthanasia described what was happening as ‘passive euthanasia.’ Obviously it was permissible medical practice, they maintained, but surely a lethal injection would be more humane. Something is wrong, they said, in permitting passive euthanasia in such cases, but forbidding active euthanasia; indeed, as the child is being euthanized because he’s handicapped, NOT because he has intestinal blockage, why not make the lethal injection an option for ALL severely handicapped children, whether or not they have intestinal blockage? Of course it was plain where this was going: it threatened the wide scale killing of the handicapped, and it was unlikely to stop with newborns once it got rolling.

One of the fallacies here is obvious, I hope. Euthanasia requires that we opt for someone’s death because we believe death is a good thing for him; this was infanticide,
getting rid of an unwanted child, not euthanasia (though of course there were occasional
murmurs that Jon et al are better off dead). One might as well call the typical abortion ‘euthanasia.’

The ACLU joined the fray, maintaining that the starvation of these children was covered by a parental ‘right to decide a child’s medical care.’ Yet it seemed plain that the ACLU wasn’t opposed to custody of children being taken from parents who refused treatment for religious reaons (Christian Scientists, et al); only when the child was handicapped did the alleged right come into play. The ACLU became a mortal adversary of handicapped children–what about THEIR civil liberties, I wondered. Later, in a case in Florida, when the parents of an anencephalic newborn wanted to harvest his organs while he was still alive, the ACLU argued that no newborn has a moral right to life: fetuses have no right to life, and the simple fact of having emerged from the womb cannot create a claim to care and protection that didn’t exist earlier. Put this together with the ‘choice in dying’ position, and one can discover a general right to infanticide of any unwanted newborn.

The Reagan administration responded by trying to enforce The Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This forbade any federally funded institution from withholding from a handicapped person, simply because she is handicapped, a service that would automatically be given an able bodied person. Reagan said he would withhold federal funding from any hospital that withheld routine life-sustaining treatment from a handicapped newborn, simply because she was handicapped, that would automatically be given a non-handicapped newborn. The Reagan admin (C. Everett Koop, a pediatrician I believe, was the surgeon general) said it had no intention of getting involved in difficult treatment decisions; its concern was the withholding of routine treatment from plainly viable handicapped newborns.

The ACLU fought this in court, arguing that Reagan was violating the aforementioned parental right to decide a child’s medical care. Meanwhile the media was full of stories about horrible things being done to children because pro-lifers insisted on unfunding hospitals that withheld, at the parents’ request, futile heroics on children who would die soon anyhow. Right-wing religious fanatics were running amuck. The ACLU prevailed in court.

However a bright light was shined on what was, in fact, infanticide, and many physicians who were initially so inclined drew away. Professional organizations of obstetricians finally began to denounce the starvation of handicapped newborns, and the practice has stopped or at least, declined.

For now. The ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ agenda on social issues, while often motivated by compassion, can be dangerous. There are medically and socially vulnerable populations
clustered at the beginning and the end of life, with the handicapped all the way through it, who are perpetually at risk. I’ve seen close up for decades what it takes to keep a severely handicapped family member alive; it tends to make one a social conservative.

3

I subscribed to Newsweek for about 15 years and read Will’s column there. I enjoyed reading him because his arguments were well reasoned and insightful and his prose was clean.

4

His father, Frederick Will, was a well-respected philosophy professor, in fact.
George argued for the Reagan side of the Baby Doe case, unsurprisingly,
along with Nat Hentoff in the Village Voice.

5

I find these accounts of the starvation of handicapped infants to be extremely distressing. I’m relieved to read that the practice has stopped or become rare. I’m also distressed to read that the ACLU was involved in promoting such a practice.

I must say, however, I’m also distressed to read about how “dangerous” liberal policies are because they inevitably result in such abuses. This is out of bounds, in my opinion. You are demonizing those with whom you disagree.

I could write just as damning an argument as to how dangerous conservative ideas are because they inevitably result in abuses that are equally horrible. (I very definitely could, and I believe some of our more outspoken liberal members could do even better a job of it than I can.)

You might want to consider dialing it back a bit, Jim. Most of what you’ve written here is helpful and compelling and tends to bring people to your side, but when you cross that line of trying to generalize your commentary to demonize the entire liberal community, you lose the sympathy of those people you should be most concerned about convincing.

Best wishes,
Jerry

6

Agree with him or not, I have always found George Will a lucid and articulate voice for conservatives. I had no idea that he had a son with Downs syndrome.

The love of a father for his son transends all politics.

7

Well said. I do think, from my own experience, that having a
severely handicapped family member can over the long term
make a big difference to one’s political point of view. Will’s love
for his son had political implications.

8

It may be worth mentioning that Down’s syndrome people are often like Jon Will in being very accepting, sincere, loving souls.

It’s as though they’re too simple to be cynical, too simple to be insincere but their capacity for love and sweetness is unimpaired. Maybe my observation is an over generalization and oversimplification, but it’s what I’ve inferred from my own limited contact and what others have reported.

Aaron, the neighbor I’ve written about in another thread, had some brain damage as a child as a complication of heart surgery. As I said in that thread, one always leaves smiling, after an encounter with him.

Best wishes,
Jerry

9

I think that’s definitely true. However, I don’t think it’s inevitable that everyone’s political views will automatically be affected in the same direction by similar experiences, at least so long as you categorize the political views so broadly, i.e., “liberal” or “conservative.”

I don’t believe that every embryo, and certainly not a simple bundle of cells only shortly after fertilization, requires the same consideration as a born child. However, when development reaches a point where the embryo might be capable of conscious experience, and unquestionably as it approaches, even remotely, the point where it might be capable of surviving outside the womb, then it’s quite a different story, from my point of view.

Even though my way of looking at the issue is different from that of someone who feels that every fertilized egg should be accorded all the protections of a fully developed, born person, it would not be accurate to lump my viewpoint together with that of someone who insists that all abortions are OK or that Down’s syndrome infants should be allowed to starve.

I believe there’s quite a lot of common ground that often gets missed, and with it opportunities to effect positive change, when we pigeonhole each other so broadly as “conservative” or “liberal.”

I would be happier if various matters could be addressed according to more specific concerns and the labels of “liberal” and “conservative” could be left out.

Of course, I’m appalled at the idea of allowing Down’s infants to die. But then, I’m a liberal. If I’m dismissed as a liberal (which is to say, someone whose philosophy inevitably leads to the conclusion that Down’s children should be allowed to die) then I couldn’t possibly agree with a conservative who is equally appalled at the idea of allowing Down’s infants to die. Obviously, we could never work together to right such wrongs. Could we?

Best wishes,
Jerry

10

I have an acquaintance who is quite liberal. She was pregnant with a Down’s infant and was aware of it. They decided to have the baby anyways. I also tend to the liberal side, yet could not have gone through with an abortion if I had found out in advance that either of my children had Down’s, because I would have felt that it was wrong to take the life of my child. However, I wouldn’t want to deny that right to anyone, and there are a lot of genetic and developmental abnormalities a lot more horrible than Down’s. We don’t see these people either because they die shortly after birth or because their handicaps confine them to bed. There are also different degrees of Down’s, and some people are more affected (and therefore more incapacitated) than others.

That being said, I thought it was interesting that George Will said his son does not “suffer from” Down’s. That seems really accurate–the individuals with Down’s that I have known and observed seem a lot less troubled by their situation than those who encounter them.

Robin

11

I agree with you whole-heartedly, Jerry. I was twitching to post something to the same effect, but doubt I could have put it so well. Bringing it down to party lines is a sad thing, in my view especailly coming from those one would consider equipped to counter the increasing polarisation of our public discourse.

12

I preface by saying that I regard jim stone as a friend and I respect his views more often than not.

Whereupon this thread was hijacked.

In the early 80s, Down Syndrome newborns, like Jon, were being starved to death in American hospitals.

I worked in hospitals from 1981 through 1997. Apart from one often-cited case in Bloomington, Indiana, I never heard of this practice. In any case, the language here suggests a widespread practice and I’d like to see evidence. I just did a google search and everything I’ve found so far refers back to that single case in Indiana.

Of course it was plain where this was going: it threatened the wide scale killing of the handicapped, and it was unlikely to stop with newborns once it got rolling.

This implication that non-pro-lifers would advocate the “wide scale killing of the handicapped” is, respectfully, bullshit. And “unlikely to stop with newborns once it got rolling” is the worse kind of inflammatory slipperly slope argument.

(though of course there were occasional
murmurs that Jon et al are better off dead). One might as well call the typical abortion ‘euthanasia.’

I have heard extremists on the right occasionally murmur all kind of crazy nonsense. Stuff that jim stone would find total nonsense. That really shouldn’t be used to attack conservatives as a group.

For now. The ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ agenda on social issues, while often motivated by compassion, can be dangerous. There are medically and socially vulnerable populations
clustered at the beginning and the end of life, with the handicapped all the way through it, who are perpetually at risk. I’ve seen close up for decades what it takes to keep a severely handicapped family member alive; it tends to make one a social conservative.

I confess I don’t even know what you are talking about. But here we are connecting infanticide to the “liberal” or “progressive” agenda. You’re painting with a brush about 2000 miles broad. As a moderate liberal who is right of center on right-to-life issues, I resent this.

Personally, my own experience with helping keep severely handicapped people stay alive and function better has tended to make me want to advocate something like, oh, I don’t know, BETTER SOCIAL PROGRAMS, UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE, AND SPENDING MONEY ON TAKING CARE OF PEOPLE AS OPPOSED TO DROPPING BOMBS AND INVADING IRAQ. You know, the nasty “liberal/progressive” thing.

If ever there was a well-meaning thread that I wish to hell I hadn’t started, it’s this one.

13

I would hope and pray that George Will would find that remark as offensive as I do.

14

Jim, Jim, Jim… You say you used to be a liberal and now you are a conservative. So you were wrong before. What if you’re wrong now?–ok, aside from that, infering that George Will is a conservative because his child has Down Syndrome. Shame on you. -mike

15

There’s a lot that’s just been said and I can’t reply to it all tonight,
as I must get some sleep. So let me say a couple of things to
a couple of people, and I’ll be back in the morning.

I wrote: ‘I do think, from my own experience, that having a
severely handicapped family member can over the long term
make a big difference to one’s political point of view. Will’s love
for his son had political implications.’

The first sentence is true, I promise you. My love for my sister,
who was terrifically and permanently brain-damaged
by a stroke at 28 and for whom I cared for 23 years, made
a big difference to my political views. (She can hardly talk,
she has range in only her left arm, she has little short term
memory, she has no numbers, she doesn’t know what day it is,
she’s hoisted from her
bed to a wheel chair every morning.) For one thing, I became
an advocate for the handicapped and I became allied politically
with movements and parties that try to protect them.

Loving somebody like my sister is like loving a negro once was.
It has political implications. If I had in 1974 (when Michele
suffered this catastrophic stroke) married a negro, that
love would have had political implications, obviously.
Love and politics are often more intertwined than one might
think. There really has a been
a danger that the handicapped would become the new niggers
of our society. You tend to see that if you love a handicapped a
person.

Will’s love for his son had political implications too, namely,
as I pointed out earlier, he defended Reagan’s
intervention in the Baby Doe controversy, as did I.
He knew where he stood on that politcial and social issue,
which at the time raged pretty fiercely.
I have no info that Will became a conservative for that reason,
and did not mean to imply that he did, though I would hardly
be surprised, given his love for his son, that it was something
that disposed him to like Reagan, as happened in my case.

16

I wrote: ‘I do think, from my own experience, that having a
severely handicapped family member can over the long term
make a big difference to one’s political point of view. Will’s love
for his son had political implications.’

The first sentence is true, I promise you. My love for my sister,
who was terrifically and permanently brain-damaged
by a stroke at 28 and for whom I cared for 23 years, made
a big difference to my political views. (She can hardly talk,
she has range in only her left arm, she has little short term
memory, she has no numbers, she doesn’t know what day it is,
she’s hoisted from her
bed to a wheel chair every morning.) For one thing, I became
an advocate for the handicapped and I became allied politically
with movements and parties that try to protect them.

Loving somebody like my sister is like loving a negro once was.
It has political implications. If I had in 1974 (when Michele
suffered this catastrophic stroke) married a negro, that
love would have had political implications, obviously.
Love and politics are often more intertwined than one might
think. There really has a been
a danger that the handicapped would become the new niggers
of our society. You tend to see that if you love a handicapped a
person.

Will’s love for his son had political implications too, namely,
as I pointed out earlier, he defended Reagan’s
intervention in the Baby Doe controversy, as did I.
He knew where he stood on that politcial and social issue,
which at the time raged pretty fiercely.
I have no info that Will became a conservative for that reason,
and did not mean to imply that he did, though I would hardly
be surprised, given his love for his son, that it was something
that disposed him to like Reagan, as happened in my case.

I think, Dale, that Will would agree with my statement,
and be as puzzled by your taking offense as I am.
I’ll be back to your longer message when I regain consciousness.
Best

17

Here’s what I wrote:

The ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ agenda on social issues, while often motivated by compassion, can be dangerous. There are medically and socially vulnerable populations
clustered at the beginning and the end of life, with the handicapped all the way through it, who are perpetually at risk. I’ve seen close up for decades what it takes to keep a severely handicapped family member alive; it tends to make one a social conservative.

Three points about this:

  1. part of the force of the quotation marks around ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’
    was to signal that the views or agenda in question may not actually be held
    by many people who identify themselves as liberals.
    They are views that tend to be
    ascribed to such people, so-called liberal or progressive views, but
    I make a point of leaving open the possiblilty that this ascription is innacurate.

  2. It is terribly hard to demonize people by calling them compassionate.
    Demonization is made of sterner stuff.

  3. I do not say that these policies must innevitably lead to abuses.
    I say is that these policies CAN be dangerous, that is, there are real risks, a potential for them to jump the tracks, because many them can have unforeseen implications for vulnerable populations of
    people , e.g. the potential consequences for
    handicapped people of legal euthanasia are quite scary. I see
    some of these views as risky; not something that must innevitably lead to abuse. Another part of the force of CAN is to signal that some so-called
    ‘liberal’ policies may be wholly good–for example, the opposition
    to the death penalty, IMO.

On a fair reading, what I wrote isn’t demonizing anybody, certainly not
the entire liberal community, nor is it the claim that ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’
policies innevitably lead to abuses. To the contrary, what I wrote is a measured and careful way of expressing my sincere concerns. Those are worth expression, I submit, especially
from someone who has seen what I have.

More later. Night all.

18

That article was beautifully written and very accurate given my limited exposure to Downs. Perhaps very mild DS people suffer, because they are aware of what they are missing; severe cases certainly seem not to at all. So killing a child with Downs because he or she has Downs would, in most cases, certainly not be a euthanasia but would be eugenics.

I’m not sure that the claim that that very person had to have Downs is correct. If we could operate on a one cell zygote to remove the genetic cause of Downs, the person who emerged later would be (numerically) the same person but would not have Downs.

That’s not how scare or snigger quotes work in my world, Jim. The implication of their use here would be that the people thus labelled were neither liberal nor progressive.

You should avoid this kind of argument, Jim. As it stands it looks dark and full of forboding, but is in fact completely vacuous.

Any state of the world CAN, through a sufficiently improbable chain of events be reached from any other possible state of affairs. Your writing the sentences I quoted MIGHT, given enough wild coincidences, lead to the complete destruction of civilization. I could write a (bad) science fiction novel in which this actually occurs.

What you need to claim is that adopting the liberal policies you have in mind significantly increases the probability of the disastrous outcome you know we would all fear. Where’s the evidence for that? This is a particularly low rhetorical ploy because it will be read in the charitable way by gullible readers to be non-vacuous but they will then only ask for the minimal evidence required for all ‘might’ counterfactuals to be true. In other words, you will induce fear where there is no rational grounds for it at all.

19

Whatever scare quotes mean in your world, I meant them as I say
I did–an effort to be careful. So-called liberal views may be
only so called because they aren’t liberal, but they also may be
merely so-called because many liberals don’t accept them.

There is a sort of principle I operate by
which I recommend. If a passage can be read in two ways, one so that
it foolish and trivial, a low rhetorical ploy, the other so that it is sincere
and making an interesting claim, I take it the second way. I was, therefore, making the claim that adopting some so-called liberal views may significantly increase the risk
of a bad outcome we may all fear. The request for evidence is
reasonalbe, and the message that preceded the quotation was actually
meant to supply some. I gave a rather pointed example,
the fear that legalizing euthanasia would seriously endanger
the handicapped and risk other bad consequences. Here I am joined by the American Medical
Association, which lists mulitple risks:

For instance many people are afraid of physicians and hospitals,
and present themselves for treatment of illnesses only after
it’s too late to cure them. To institutionalize euthansia, however carefully,
would magnify all the latent fear of doctors and hospitals harbored by
the public. The result would be a rise in late presenters and, therefore,
preventable deaths.

There are several more (this from Objections to the Instinituitionalization of
Euthanasia by StephenG. Potts, a British physician). I cover only
a few:

Here’s another: Potts writes: How long after acceptance of voluntary
euthanasia will we hear the calls for non-voluntary euthanasia? There
are thousands of comatose or dememnted patients sustained by
little more than nursing care. They are an enormous financial and
social burden. How soon will the advocates of euthanasia be
arguing that we should assist them in dying–for, after all, they won’t
mind, will they? How soon after that will we hear the calls for involuntary
euthanasia, the disposal of the burdensome, the unproductive, the polluters of the gene pool? We must never forget the way the Nazi euthanasia programme made this progression in a few short years. "oh, but they were barbarians,’ you say, and so they were, but not
at the outset.’

AS I mentioned, having been on the line trying to keep my sister
alive, these concerns have considerable force. She has
been no-coded illegally repeatedly. Blink and there is a Do Not
Resuscitate order in her chart; medical personel are eager
to do what they can to speed the severely disabled to the next
world. People in nursing homes are especially at risk.

Further it is a feature of American law that medical rights
can be exercised on your behalf by a surrogate, who may
well be someone you’ve never met. Nor, in most states,
is it required that this person have any evidence that
it is your wish to die; though they can remove
life-sustaining treatment on the ground that they think it’s in your
‘best interest.’ . It is hardly fear-mongering to be concerned
about what will happen to disabled people, especially those like
my sister who cannot speak effectively for themselves,
when legal euthanasia is added to
the mix, especially given high medical costs and the fact
that euthanasia is always the cheapest treatment.

In most states today, to put this point slightly differently,
a surrogate can, without evidence that it
is her wish, starve to death a comatose person. Obviously
such people will be euthanized, the lethal injection, once
that’s legal. But consider what falls away–you don’t
need the patient’s consent to kill her, she needn’t be dying, old or suffering,
nor need there be clear and convincing evidence that she
would want this. Now consider the disabled, Alzheimer’s patients,
and what dangers they will be placed in, those who
cannot dial a phone, carry on a conversation, once that precedent
is set..

These risks are widely enough recognized that some have
argued that physician-assisted suicide minimizes them.
There are multiple difficulites here as well, not the
least of which is that legal active euthanasia will probably
follow soon enough on 14th Amendment equal protection
grounds, people being too sick or disabled to swallow the
pills or keep them down maintaining that they are being
denied the happy death others get simply because
they are too sick or handicapped to commit suicide.
Or the active euthanasia
law will be passed legislatively, or the assisted suicide
law will BE the active euthanasia law, for the law prohibiting
active euthanasia will become unenforceable once
physician assisted suicide is legal (‘She couldn’t keep the
pills down and she begged me to kill her, so I did!’ the
physician says; what jury will convict?).

20

Jim,

I gotta agree with Dale. You highjacked the thread. I suggest you should have just made a note that you were going to respond, and then directed people to the “political” thread, which is where your discourse belonged.

Your style reminds me of unhappy encounters I’ve had with some otherwise very bright people: they thought if they talked loudly enough and long enough, using “beautifully reasoned” arguments, I’d just give up and agree with them. (Factual accuracy did not always enter into it–one just wanted to get me in bed.)

Were they ever wrong? Never in their own minds. Did they ever apologize? Only in the style of, “well, I’m sorry you made me do it.”

If you care to respond, please post it to the “political” thread. (You, too, Wombat. Take it outside.)

M