June 7, 2009 at 7:04 am
· Filed under Civil Rights, Ecology - issues for survival
A recent article in Newsweek led me to wonder, when does choice become control? The article concerned a newly developed process whereby a woman can have her eggs harvested and frozen for latter use. What interested me was the rationale for the procedure: it expands a woman’s control over her body. That comment was followed by an explanation that currently women, who previously had to choose between a successful career and a family, now “could have it all”.What I question is when does choice become control, and is having the choice or option of controlling one’s body necessarily a good thing?
Where do we draw the line concerning choice? Many unanswered legal and ethical concerns often follow having a choice. If we aren’t careful, science presents options before society has considered either law or ethics. One example is the medical breakthroughs that allow a hospital to keep a human body alive long after the heart and/or brain cease to function independently. Who decides the outcome?
So, I present several current dilemma and ask for comment. For each, should we have a choice, and who should have the power to decide?
Right to die -
1. If person is a vegetable with no hope of recovery.
2. If a person is viable but has a terminal disease that cannot be healed but can be treated. The patient can live longer while being treated (blood cancer, for example). Consider the implications if the patient must continually suffer.
3. If s person is old, alone, depressed, and in frequent distress.
Right to life -
1. If the person is a hardened criminal who has killed several people.
2. If the person is disabled and has no means of earning a living.
3. If the person is a single mother without means of financial support.
Right to independence and emancipation
1. If the person is a battered wife with children
2. If the person is a teenager who disagrees with parents beliefs
3. If the person is an underage combat soldier returning from battle
There are numerous such “choices”. Should we, as a society, determine such questions?
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Dave said,
July 2, 2009 @ 11:29 am
Yes. Many people are just not capable of making these distinctions. Without rules or guidelines from society, people will chose by knee-jerk reaction. They may regret the decision later or realize that they tramped all over another person’s rights why being emotional themselves. This is tricky stuff.
Sarah Puglisi said,
September 26, 2009 @ 2:09 pm
Right to die -
1. If person is a vegetable with no hope of recovery.
I suppose people write these advance directives on subjects like this. I certainly recall a doctor telling us to stop feeding my grandmother and by doing so end her life, she had advanced Alzheimer’s and a strong heart. He saw no reason really to continue treating her after a stroke, she lived another year, not on the back of the medical system though. She recovered enough to eat if we fed her with care. But he did call her a vegetable.
I worked with BoPark a group that ran summer programs at a camp two years in summer directing the art part with kids severely “retarded” children so severely damaged they could not dress themselves. Many would be called vegetables I think.
Quite a hard thing for their families so that week at camp meant often a little rest.
Some would institutionalize or maybe even end these lives. We’ve had world leaders that certainly would.
Opa I learned a lot from my grandmother even when she was this ill and a heck of a lot from those kids.
It gave me an opportunity to discover compassion and to understand the work I did as an act of caring that I might hope would be extended to everyone. And what that meant. I loved my grandmother and I had to sit with her suffering. I think the easy elimination of another might end a lot of our possiblity for humanity.
2. If a person is viable but has a terminal disease that cannot be healed but can be treated. The patient can live longer while being treated (blood cancer, for example). Consider the implications if the patient must continually suffer.
yes, it is hard. I struggle with this. I have days the pain is really beyond me. My son often helps me understand. He sits with me sometimes. He started this young. Luca’s not a “talker” but in his silent sitting there is a lot of reason to keep on going.
3. If s person is old, alone, depressed, and in frequent distress.
My father would qualify, his back pain consumes his old age.
Depression washes him.
But for all of that he still recently wrote me some words of advice about my ambivilence about my kids growing up. Ours was not an easy daughter/dad relating but I know I need him in our world. I just cannot imagine if he ended it all-he knows how to, Dad keeps going for us I really believe. Funny but it’s as if he is showing us that a hard path still is worth doing. Funny.
I am never going to forget that doctor that advised me to off my grandma because it was a particularly bad day. I was so angry we took her out of the facility to another. That just offended me, she NURSED people all her life and I rarely if ever saw a nurse in her room and they didn’t detect the stroke ALL DAY, I’d been at work. She gave her whole life to caring for others. I think of that even now and know where I stand on life.
And though I am liberal I think, if I even understand that, that life issues are difficult. You are right about that for sure. I don’t care for a world that let’s us get into situations where we don’t value life above all else AND have ways to support people through tough things wit medical care and support systems over talking of price tags and societal “cost.”
Right to life -
1. If the person is a hardened criminal who has killed several people.
I’m understanding you to be asking if they should die. Well they will die.
My father, I’ll revert to him here, he’s always said prison is a horror. So I suppose he was really saying that’s enough.
2. If the person is disabled and has no means of earning a living.
Now this one sounds like the way a man might frame a question as I think of them so much involved in earning. My brother who doesn’t work with issues I guess would then have to go and if my syrinx and cancer worsens I would too. Plus I have a cousin married to a life long welfare guy. I suppose all would have to be eliminated.
If we can’t create a world where value is seen in terms beyond this, then it’s a sad thing. I’ve worked my entire life, pretty hard, so don’t gather I don’t think it’s an excusable thing in myself to live off of anyone but I was lucky enough to be in this country in a situation where I was able to get it. I’d hope we’d make a world where our compassion would allow us to see everyone’s inherent value.
3. If the person is a single mother without means of financial support.
And my work is often in admiration of young moms like this as I work with their children.They struggle greatly and within them I’ve met some wonderful beings and seen remarkable suffering. Just kids often you know and often turning to things for comfort coming out of poverty. Bill Moyers in the 60′s did a program on poverty looking at young moms, in poverty. What he said essentially was the most creative thing they could do in their situation was have a child.
Would Mary have been this ? I think she was. And she birthed a savior.
Right to independence and emancipation
1. If the person is a battered wife with children
I wish we had systems of real support for this.
I work with so much that comes out of abusive homes-kids in foster care from it as well. It’s really tough. Often the males are just poorly educated, damaged, without help. My father was abusive with an early life in abject poverty and the worst possible damage to his psyche. I would hope I’ve healed some of that.
He had the right to get free of it but he really didn’t.
A mess.
Hard question.
2. If the person is a teenager who disagrees with parents beliefs
And many teenagers define themselves by pulling away from the parents “beliefs’. It’s their route to feeling they can differentiate.
Not easy I’m finding.
3. If the person is an underage combat soldier returning from battle
I see this too. A lot to heal.
i realize all of the above require our compassion.
There are numerous such ?choices?. Should we, as a society, determine such questions?
I doubt in the current atmosphere of push/pull it would be so great an idea.
We probably ought to try a few of our creeds for guidance. I honestly feel the times are a bit scary.
Thanks for the thinking time
sarah
I’m glad I got the call on my grandmom.
Opa said,
September 26, 2009 @ 5:52 pm
Sarah,
I, too, am glad you got the call for your grandmother.
Thank you for your reply. You give comments on all the questions.
Personally, when it comes to these questions, I am pro life. So many of these questions ignore that life resides within each of the people involved with the incident. Just because we cannot converse with a sick person does not mean that the person is not longer thinking, meditating, or praying. In each incident I vote for life without our interference.
The only exception is having a person on artificial life support. If their body no longer sustains life (heart will not beat, brain no longer capable of thought) I do not believe we should force their body to continue. On the other hand, if the only action they are unable to perform is feeding, then I think starving the person to death is bad. I have seen too many cases where the person later revived, left the bed, and resumed a regular life.
Opa