Hopefully the disabled groups will help save her and others. It will be hard for the Times to protray them as crazed right wingers and right to lifers.

It would seem to me the possibility she is immersed in a living hell would also be a chilling thought.

Jeff, who do you suppose should be the judge and jury to decide this?

Jeff: The possibility IS a chilling thought. But since I'm not God, I'm not willing to assume the authority to terminate that possible LIVING (key word you used there) hell for her. And I don't know that I want other people to assume that authority in my case, or in the case of other disabled people.

Kevin:

You are quite right--but that chilling thought still won't go away.

Jeff:

That's because you're incapable of thinking of anyone but yourself. The issue isn't you who want to be killed, but we who you'd have kill you.

OJ:

Stopping continued intrusive feeding when the body shows absolutely no sign of ever being able to resume that function for itself is allowing nature to take its course.

Which is a far different thing from killing someone.

Unfortunately, you seem incapable of acknowledging principled, moral, positions other than your own.

Doing whatever you want is amoral by definition. That shouldn't be a problem for you, since you believe in neither God nor the soul. Unfortunately, you wish to ditch the only basis for morality but be called moral for peer group reasons.

OJ:

That I make a decision that doesn't agree with your narrow and sometimes bigoted view of morality doesn't mean I'm doing whatever I want, or that my decision is amoral in any way.

It should, however, suggest to you that your specific position on what constitutes moral may in fact be neither complete nor correct.

Which is OK--after all, neither is mine. However, wherever someone else's morality collides with yours, you seem happy to call in the State.

When someone else's morality collides with mine, I remember that my morality is neither complete, nor correct.

Kevin:

Someone ALWAYS has to assume that authority, in the case of those who cannot speak for themselves. For instance, parents already have that authority over minor children, and spouses for each other.
The issue here is: How far should such authority go, not: Should such authority be assumed.

oj:

Why are you so sure God wants society to force anyone to live ? After all, we are mortal, designed by God to die.
Further, anyone is far better off in heaven, than on Earth.

Thou shalt not kill.

Michael:

Should parents be allowed to kill their children?

Jeff:

Resort to personal opinion is not morality. Morality has to be derived from a standard outside the self.

OJ:

Whose? Yours, Mormon, Jewish, Episopalian, Lutheran, Baptist, Unitarian, Christian Scientist, Jehovah's Witness, Catholic, etc?

I'll bet in that short list of self-proclaimed moralities there are both answers to this problem for each sect.

By what standard to presume to impose yours?

There's a chilling thought--letting the editors of the Times decide what is "meaningful".

Wouldn't they have to stop feeding MoDo and Kruman?

oj:

Thou shalt not murder. Killing is often fine.

We already allow parents to make decisions that result in children dying, from where they live, to what vehicle they drive, to allowing them to opt out of vaccinations, and even to not treat them for fatal conditions.

If you mean, should parents be allowed to drown them in a lake or bathtub, then no.
However, under normal conditions, one citizen isn't allowed to kill another, either.
We're not discussing normal conditions.

Jeff:

Mormon. Can't go wrong there. ; )

Robert:

Funny.

Jeff:

Two thousand years of Western Civilization.

OJ:

That's no answer. I'm not trying to explain Western Civ, I'm trying to determine which moral standard of all those available you would choose to impose upon the morally degenerate among us.

Because that list above provides no answer.

Jeff--

I guess there is no answer according to your thinking so how do we decide? Do we reason together? Try to discern to the general will? Or let the group with the most guns make the call? Since there are no objective standards that you can possibley accept ~logically~ we run out of alternatives. Since Western Civ, as you put it, offers little guidance our legal system has little ~reason~ for the authority we have assigned it. Survival of the fittest and the myth of the Noble Savage will return us to the law of the jungle or the man on a white charger as it has done time after time. I'm fairly certain that is not your intention.

Tom:

Keep in mind what is being decided here: who is empowered to decide for me when medical care shall end when I am no longer capable of voicing that decision, and there is no prospect of regaining that capability.

Each of those religions I cited above is convinced they have a lock on morality. Yet within those religions, there will be strong beliefs on both sides.

As a blinkered atheist, Tom, to whom do I turn for the correct answer?

OJ: Are you going to force an adult Jehovah's Witness to take a blood transfusion?

Thou shalt not kill.

OJ:

Kill and allow to die are two different things.

I'm sorry. Is that a yes or a no?

No. I'd not force a blood transfusion on a Jehovah any more than I'd force a feeding tube in. But once started, I'd not disconnect for them.

You can't make someone accept help; but they can't give you the right to kill them.

So you wouldn't force a blood transfusion, even though the absence of which would be suicidal.

Yet you would stop someone jumping off a bridge if you could.

If there is a moral distinction there, I sure can't find it.

If you can't make someone accept help, you can't make them continue to accept help.

Jeff:

The Jehovah has a complex, consistent, and enduring set of moral beliefs. The jumper has had a bad week.

They are both suicide.

Sounds to me like you are making a distinction without a difference.