4:38am October 30, 2014

The simple guide to the Nancy Fitzmaurice issue

cyborgbutterflies:

When someone willing ends their life, it is suicide. A very sad thing but also something people should ultimately have the right to do if they can be said to actually own their bodies at all.

When someone wishes to end their life and clearly calls for assistance with it, it is voluntary euthanasia. Also sad but acceptable because bodily autonomy.

But starving someone to death over two weeks when they never expressed any interest in dying? That’s just murder and torture.

Voluntary euthanasia is acceptable to some people, not others. Others worry about it being a slippery slope, and not without reason. In another world, I might support voluntary euthanasia in a very limited range of circumstances. In this world, I can’t, my life depends on not supporting it, literally.

But that said, murdering someone who has not asked to die is murder, period. (Murdering someone who has asked to die is also often murder. Interesting how if a person is diseased or disabled it’s “voluntary euthanasia”, but when a person is otherwise nondisabled and expresses a wish to die, it’s mental illness and killing them would be murder. Double standard, much?)

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