So, it’s not “objectively preferable” then.
In her short life before she died, Brittany Maynard lived her life with more spirit, adventure, grace, and courage than most of us ever have or likely ever will. How many of us have earned our postgraduate degree and then traveled to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Singapore and Thailand as she did, taught at orphanages in Katmandu, ice-climbed the Andes of Ecuador, and become certified in scuba – all before turning 30? How many of us have climbed Kilimanjaro? She did that, too. To call her a “coward”, and to pass moral judgment on her death with zero knowledge of the facts – zero knowledge of her disease and prognosis and the horrors that she was going through – seems to me to be reprehensible. I think Brittany understood life and its value far better than any self-appointed armchair moralist ever will.
This opinion piece by a medical ethicist reflects some of the prevalent views of the medical profession and other ethicists and is well worth a read.
One is passive, the other is active.
Or let me put it this way. I just got through an especially bad bout with kidney stones. And I suffered. Oh, did I suffer. But I knew my suffering was going to have a positive result, and it did. I’m now as spry and happy as a British schoolgirl.
Brittany Maynard’s suffering was going to have no positive outcome. It was going to be suffering for the sake of suffering, which would have no positive outcome for her and would probably have traumatized her family having to watch her go through it.
Whatever obligation you think she might have to life and the world is trumped by her own right to self-determination.
I have to confess I’m curious as to who wins out in a battle between mother nature and earthly authority for you,** Smapti**. Let’s say that the government orders a person to kill themselves; for the purposes of this hypothetical, let’s say there’s no escape, no pleading, no alternative options that will be accepted. The order stands, come what may.
Is it correct under your worldview for the person to disobey mother nature, or his/her authority?
And she wasted it all.
Noone who can climb Kilimanjaro is so sick that they need to die. She was a coward.
If she understood life she’d still be living it.
If you truly believe this, then you know nothing about this specific situation.
Assuming that the failure for refusing the order is death, then there’s no choice to be made any way and the question is moot.
I understand it better than she did. “I have cancer, so I’m going to climb mountains and tour the world and then kill myself because I don’t want to be sick” is the very epitome of “first world problems”.
And if it isn’t?
Then I don’t know.
No, you’re just … wrong. She gave life all she could and when she knew that there was no more life to be lived she decided to go out on her own terms.
She lived life until life had nothing more to offer. She went out with a bang. And she only stopped when her body didn’t allow her to actually live anymore.
If her body wouldn’t allow her to live anymore, she wouldn’t have had to kill herself, because she’d have died on her own.
She did, so it hadn’t, so she died a coward.
Given that she did not understand life and was insane, in what sense can she reasonably be called a “coward”?
The sense in which she chose to kill herself.
You seem to be confusing two different meanings of the word “life.” Yes, she had life … her body was still technically alive. But any real “life” was forever outside of her reach.
Yes, she would have died anyway. What would be the point of the suffering she would have gone through merely to let nature take it’s course?
But she was insane. She did not understand life. She could not possibly have been aware of the consequences either way of killing herself, per you. She did not understand what she was giving up. She did not have a reality-based comprehension.
I think you’re throwing out too many negatives that contradict each other.
If her body had life, then real life was within her reach.
She would have lived to experience it. Those who loved her would not have been deprived of the time they could have had with her. Those in similar situations could have been given a hero to look up to, rather than a reason to believe there’s an easy way out. The data collected during her final days could have proven invaluable to researchers looking for a cure.
She robbed the world of all of this and more through her selfishness and cowardice.
I’m not sure this statement is really meaningful. If someone were to hang himself at home, for instance, what good does it do to say, “He didn’t have the right to commit suicide?”
To discourage others from following his example.
Smapti, what is the longest that you’ve been in pain? What kind of pain was it? What is the longest you’ve seen a loved one in pain? What kind of pain was it?
Have you been unable to handle the most private parts of caring for your own body? For how long? What about your family? Has anyone in your family been unable to go to the bathroom, wipe, or bathe their most private parts without help? For how long?
Have you seen and lived with anyone who’s lost all memory of who they are, who you are, and where you are? Have you explained eight times in an hour, day after day? Have you held their hand as they faced that fear and confusion again and again?
On this we mostly agree. I think people should be allowed to choose to die on their own terms if they want to. But they should not be compelled to. And I agree that we should give the dying anything they want. Heroin. MJ. Meth. Coffee. Whiskey. Whiskey with opioids. Strippers. Whatever they want.