Right to Life equate to Right to Death?
 

We were discussing the implications of the US's right to life as it pertains to suicide, or a right to death, and I thought it would be a good topic for this forum.

I feel that the right to life implies a right to not live....but apparently the Supreme Court disagrees (I'd cite, but I'm lazy right now). Any commentary?

I'd like to hear the Supreme Court's justification, actually. I vaguely remember long discussion in a certain philosophy class regarding medical ethics, with the right to suicide being a sort of side-bar topic. It always seemed to me that a number of laws exist simply because they were handed down from the Judeo-Christian ethic that the west is descended from.

Suicide can be irresponsible, especially if you are a parent of young children. It can also be beneficial, for example in the case of a drug addict overdosing. However, in none of these cases do I see reason for the government to ban suicide on moral grounds. "It's just wrong," or "It's the easy way out of your problems," isn't moral justification. "It hurts the people that love you," is irrelevant, because living hurts the person that committed suicide. How are you going to play one person's hurt against another's?

Freud reasoned that every person has an unconscious wish to die. Life can be a painful and exhausting undertaking, and can deliver more pain that pleasure for most people. Death promises release from this perpetual struggle.

If you believe in the death instinct as Freud called it, you could argue that the government has no right to infringe on matters so personal.

And so I believe this equation should not have to be made.

in the vast majority of cases, suicide is a permanant way of ending temporary problems. We wouldn't let someone go with out treatment for a simple infection until there was no hope...why suggest, condone or accept that people are left with out treatment until a disease kills them?

"Did you ever notice that most of the right to lifers are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?" - Carlin

(thought I'd add some humor around here:))

Yes the cast majority, but I think people are mainly speaking of those who would like to have a quick painless death instead of a slow and painful death (IE an uncurable disease that will take you slowly). I think you should have every right to choose quick and easy over painful and slow.