The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

Containing His Articles, Observations, Thoughts, Meanderings,
and some would say Wisdom (and some would say not).

The Rights of Abortion, Homosexual Marriage, Transgendered, and Assisted Suicide

Introduction

Rights often are at a dichotomy with and between other’s person’s rights. And a dichotomy between individuals’ interests and societies’ interests. The main question is “What is the practical good versus the possible harm to the individuals involved?” and “What are the societal benefits versus the societal detriments of instituting a policy?”. It is difficult, and often contentious, to resolve these problems of the dichotomy of rights. In today’s America, many groups of racial, ethnic, sexual, social, or cultural identity persons are claiming “Rights” under the mantle of civil rights, as I have Chirped on “07/08/23 Under the Mantle of Civil Rights”. Most of these groups fall within the definition of Identity Politics as practiced by Democrat Party Leaders and Progressives/Leftists. In America today, this is being prominently played out in the issues of Abortion, Homosexual Marriage, Transgendered, and Assisted Suicide Rights.

Many of the supporters of these Rights claim that moral and religious beliefs should not influence political and legal considerations. This was the sort of doublespeak that Dr. King railed against in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, in which he explained how religion and morality must play a central role in our political life:

“A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”

In addition, under the rhubarb of “Hate Speech”, the First Amendment Rights of Freedom of Speech, the Free Exercise of Religion, Freedom of Assembly, and the Freedom of the Press are being infringed by those persons, groups, and organizations that support Abortion, Homosexual Marriage, Transgendered, and Assisted Suicide Rights, in an effort to silence those that do not agree with them. Thus, we not only have a dichotomy of rights within these issues but a suppression of rights of those who would disagree that these are “Rights”.

Abortion, Homosexual Marriage, Transgendered, and Assisted Suicide Rights have a profound impact on individuals and society. These rights must be considered not only for the good of individuals but also for the common good of society. Your rights do not give you the ability to harm yourself, others, or society. Consequently, we need to proceed very carefully in establishing these rights and consider the rights of all individuals as well as the impacts on society in establishing these rights. Otherwise, we will make decisions harmful to all Americans and to our society.

Abortion Rights

While I have made my opinions on Abortion known in my articles "The Abortion Question" and "The Analogy of Abortion and Slavery", the abortion issue is deep and nuanced, and it deserves to be considered in depth. An intellectual, philosophical, and reasoned discourse on Abortion is the new book, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing by Ryan T. Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis, which examines the impacts of abortion in depth.

I am old enough to remember when the proponents of abortion insisted that they wanted to make abortion “Safe, Legal, and Rare”. Somewhere along the way, “Rare” was forgotten, and convenient and desirable replaced rare. In this book, the authors examine how our fifty-year experiment with unlimited abortion has harmed everyone―even its most passionate proponents. Women, men, medicine, the media, marriage, and the family―and, of course, children (born and unborn) ―have all been harmed by unlimited abortion. It has also undermined the rule of law and corrupted our political system. It is a sobering history that should give pause to any other far-reaching social change that would undertake, such as Homosexual Marriage, Transgendered, and Assisted Suicide Rights.

The National Review has published an article by the authors that is an overview of the book. The authors present “the basic case for the right to life of the unborn child” in terms of three ideas:

Biological: A new human being comes into existence at conception.
Moral: Human beings are created equal and possess intrinsic dignity and worth.
Political: Governments exist to, at the very least, protect innocent human beings from lethal violence.

The authors explore the impacts of Abortion in the chapters of their book, the descriptions of which I have extracted from the Introduction of this book:

In Chapter One, we make the case that the most fundamental harm of abortion is to the unborn child. We refute a number of justifications for abortion, including claims that the child in the womb is neither a human being nor a human person. We address the straightforward, biological case for the humanity of the unborn child, and we argue that every human being is a person with dignity and worth. As a result of these two truths, we make the case that a rightly ordered government must protect human beings from lethal violence. Finally, we address a well-known philosophical argument that justifies abortion as purportedly non-intentional killing, an argument now popularized by emphasizing the bodily autonomy of women. But, as we explain, all our liberties have limits, and the unborn baby isn’t an unjust intruder that can be fended off using lethal means.

Chapter Two addresses the argument that abortion is a boon to women, allowing them to participate in sex and the economy on equal footing with men. The real story is far more complicated. Abortion has injected violence into the sacred relationship between a mother and her child. Abortion has not solved the problems that supporters claimed it would, and even on its own terms it has not been the cause or even a condition of increased education or workplace success for women. Rather than freeing women from the burden of pregnancy as feminists claimed it would, abortion has intensified the ways in which our culture treats pregnancy as a “woman’s problem.” Abortion has not increased support for pregnant mothers in need but has fed a culture that treats woman who continue pregnancies as if they’re on their own, because, after all, they could’ve chosen abortion. Abortion has made it easier for men to leave a woman and harder for women to refuse abortion, even when they would prefer to choose life. And, as we document in this chapter, it has put women at risk of immediate physical consequences from botched procedures, as well as long-term risks to both their physical and psychological health.

In Chapter Three, we document the ways in which abortion has exacerbated inequality, perpetuating racial division and social stratification. We explain the eugenic roots of the modern abortion-rights movement, which originated with birth-control advocates who wanted to limit the growth of supposedly undesirable populations such as non-white Americans, the poor, and people with disabilities. We show how today a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic babies are killed in the womb—an ominous trend that abortion supporters either ignore or celebrate—as well as discriminatory abortions, especially those that target unborn baby girls or children diagnosed with disabilities. Finally, we address the important work of pregnancy-resource centers in offering mothers alternatives to abortion, a mission that abortion supporters not only neglect but actively oppose—thus revealing them to be much more pro-abortion than ”pro-choice,” at least when that choice is anything other than abortion.

In Chapter Four, we consider the ways that legalized abortion has corrupted our medical system, leading medical organizations and a significant number of doctors to lie about the biology of human life and used their expertise to kill rather than cure. We explain how pro-abortion doctors influenced the Supreme Court decision inventing a right to abortion, and tell the story of how the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists evolved from a non-partisan professional organization into a transparently political abortion advocacy group. We examine the brutal business of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, and refute falsehoods that the group and its supporters promote. Lastly, we consider the risks that abortion poses to conscience rights and religious freedoms.

In Chapter Five, we outline the history of the Supreme Court decisions that created the legal landscape perpetuating abortion. We explain the bad history, flawed reasoning, and political machinations that led the Court to manufacture a constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade. We also consider the Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld the core of Roe while altering its reasoning, and we explain how abortion jurisprudence has created an unjust and unworkable status quo. Rightly understood, nothing in our Constitution protects lethal violence in the womb. Appeals to “privacy”, “autonomy”, and “equality” should not prevent lawmakers from protecting unborn children.

In Chapter Six, we examine the political ramifications of those judicial decisions, and the subsequent decades of our permissive abortion regime. We explain that most Americans would prefer to protect unborn children far more than Roe and Casey allow, and we tell the story of how the Democratic Party slid in a radically pro-abortion direction in the span of a few decades, turning abortion into a politically polarizing issue, eventually excluding from the party anyone who does not support an increasingly extreme position. Finally, we discuss how abortion has turned judicial confirmations into toxic political battles. Or politics and our society would be better served if neither of our major political parties supported abortion, a blatant violation of fundamental human rights. Democratic politicians’ excuses for embracing abortion require them to deny the proper role of morality and religion in our politics. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his famous letter against in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” justice requires that our man-made laws comport with the natural and eternal law. The rhetoric of Democrats who support abortion urges us to serve our legal system from its natural and divine sources. Meanwhile, the party’s embrace of abortion has made our political process hostage to abortion. It would be far better for pro-life citizens to have a meaningful political choice between two parties, neither of which was committed to gross injustice.

In Chapter Seven, we turn to culture. There we argue that the widespread acceptance of abortion has corrupted legacy media outlets, making it far less likely that the truth about abortion will reach many Americans and disrupt their settled views on the subject. We survey pro-abortion bias at major tech and social-media companies and the significant support for abortion in Hollywood, which shapes how users and viewers think about abortion. Censorship and bias limit the ability of pro-lifers to share the truth with those that need to hear it, while glamourous depictions of abortion spread the fundamental lie that abortion should be celebrated. We also consider the growing support for abortion among major corporations, which are increasingly using their social power to preserve legal abortion and block pro-life policies.

In our conclusion, we take stock of where fifty years of abortion have left our nation, and the work that still needs to be done. We suggest that pro-lifers remember that ending abortion will require a “both-and” approach on a number of levels, not an “either-or”. We need plans for shifting our laws and our culture, efforts to care for babies and mothers, work from state to federal governments—and we must do all of this in service of ending the supply of and demand for abortion.

I have often said that the core issue of abortion is the humanity of the unborn child. For if the unborn child is human, then it has human rights; among those is the right to life. I have further said that if you give a cell of an unborn child to a geneticist and ask them to identify the species, they will respond that it is a homo sapiens. If you gave the geneticist a cell from the mother and the father of the unborn child and asked them if they were the same person, they would respond no, and they could determine with high accuracy that one of the cells was the child of the other two cells, but that they were different individuals (as their DNA is uniquely different from each other). Thus, the unborn child, the mother, and the father are unique people, and as such, they are deserving of the natural right to life and not unjustly have their lives taken by another person. In the first chapter of this book, the authors provide a more definitive explanation:

“Each of us begins life as a single cell. This single-cell organism, a zygote, forms after the sperm and egg fuse, and it rapidly develops into a blastocyst and then an embryo and then a fetus. But none of these are separate organisms. Rather these words refer to the same human organism at different stages of development, at different ages.”

And:

“This is simply to say that human development is a dynamic process, one that extends far beyond the months before birth. We come into existence as organisms who develop over time to be able to exercise more and more of our capabilities. That’s what we mean when we say the newly conceived child is a human life with potential, rather than a potential life. The one-cell zygote, multi-cell embryo, fetus, newborn, toddler, child, adolescent, and adult are all various stages of a single organism’s growth and development; these stages don’t each represent different organisms but rather periods in the life of one and the same human being. Birth may be an extraordinary event, but it is not a magical dividing line. Each of us (unless we’re an identical twin) started out as a one celled zygote and have been developing as continuous, unique biological entities ever since.”

The authors then proceed to examine the arguments of the pro-abortion advocates that attempt to differentiate between human beings and human persons, as well as various other arguments that justify abortion on the basis that an unborn child does not deserve the natural right to life. As the Bard has said in Hamlet, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” so the abortion question is one of is the unborn child a human being or is not a human being? The answer to that question determines the moral and legal status of the unborn child.

I would also note that under European law, if the unborn child is determined to be human and have human rights, then all abortions would be illegal in all European countries that endorsed the European Convention on Human Rights statement:

“All human life is of value and our law contains the strong presumption that all steps will be taken to preserve it, unless the circumstances are exceptional. This principle is reflected in Article 2 European Commission on Human Rights, which provides that everyone’s life shall be protected by law. It is the most fundamental of the Convention rights.”

As for America, our Declaration of Independence is the bedrock of our ideals, while the Constitution of the United States is the foundation of the ideas of how to institute our ideals. The Declaration of Independence declares that:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

While the Constitution of the United States declares that:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The unalienable right to life and to establish justice requires that the American people and the American government protect the natural right to life for all human beings, including the unborn child.

The successive chapters of this book examine the harm done when we do not protect the right to life of the unborn child. It is a sad fifty-year history of physical and mental abuse to the mother, father, and unborn child, and the degradation of our society as a result of allowing abortions of the unborn child. The conclusion of this book is a clarion call for action in opposing abortion, and the author's final sentence states:

“And finally, each of us must arm ourselves with courage, resolving to help our neighbors open their eyes to the truth of what abortion is and how it harms all of us.”

For those who are interested in a dispassionate analysis of abortion (dispassionate in that it presents an intellectual and reasoned viewpoint of the impacts of abortion but a passionate belief that abortion is a wrong for the unborn child, the mother, and our society), I would highly recommend this book. For those that support abortion, I would recommend this book so that you can fully understand the individual and societal impacts of abortion. In either case, this book will inform you on what you need to know, not what you want to hear, a practice that I have endeavored to keep all my adult life.

Homosexual Marriage Rights

The legal issue of homosexual marriage has been decided affirmatively in America. However, the social repercussion of homosexual marriage still reverberates throughout America. These social repercussions are often hidden or unexpressed through fear of ridicule or worse, but they remain. Until very recently, no society had seen marriage as anything other than a conjugal partnership: a male-female union.

An intellectual, philosophical, and reasoned discourse on What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense by Sherif Gergis, Ryan T. Anderson, Robert P. George identifies and defends the reasons for this historic consensus and shows why redefining civil marriage as something other than the conjugal union of husband and wife is a mistake.

In this book, they point out the two views of the meaning of marriage as:

“The conjugal view of marriage has long informed the law—along with the literature, art, philosophy, religion, and social practice—of our civilization. It is a vision of marriage as a bodily as well as an emotional and spiritual view bond, distinguished thus by its comprehensiveness, which is, like all love, effusive: flowing our into the wide sharing of family life and ahead to lifelong fidelity. In marriage so understood, the world rests its hopes and finds ultimate renewal.” and “A second, revisionists view has informed the marriage policy reforms of the last several decades. It is a vision of marriage as, in essence, a loving emotional bond one distinguished by its intensity—a bond that needn’t point beyond the partners, in which fidelity is ultimately subject to one’s own desires. In marriage, so understood, partners seek emotional fulfillment, and remains as long as they find it.”

The social repercussions of these two marriage views are:

Real Marital Fulfillment. No one deliberates or acts in a vacuum. We all take cues from cultural norms, which are shaped by the law. To form a true marriage, one must freely choose it. And to choose marriage, one must have at least a rough, intuitive idea of what it is.
Spousal Well-being. Marriage tends to make spouses healthier, happier, and wealthier, than they would otherwise be. But what does this is marriage, especially through its distinctive norms of permanence, exclusivity, and orientation to family life.
Child Well-being. If same-sex relationships are recognized as marriages, not only will the norms that keep marriage stable be undermined, but the notion that men and women bring different gifts to parenting will not be reenforced by any bay any civil institution.
Misunderstandings about marriage will also speed our society’s drought of deep friendship, with special harm to the unmarried. The state will have defined marriage mainly by degree and intensity—as offering the most of what makes any relationship valuable: shared emotion and experience.
Religious Liberty. As the conjugal view comes to be seen as irrational, people’s freedom to express and live by it will be curbed. If civil marriage is redefined, believing what virtually every human society once believed about marriage—that it is a male-female union—will be seen increasingly as a malicious prejudice, to be driven to the margins of culture.
Limited Government. The state is (or should be) a supporting actor in our lives, not a protagonist. It exists to create the conditions under which we and our formed communities can thrive. The most important free community, on which all others depend, is marriage; and the conditions for its thriving include both the accommodations for couples and the pressures on them to stay together that marriage law provides.

They also point out what their argument is not:

“First, it is in the end not about homosexuality. We do not address the morality of homosexual acts or their heterosexual counterparts.” and “Second, our argument makes no appeal to divine revelation or religious authority.” and “Third, both social science and history play merely supporting roles in our argument.”

They then go on to explore the topic of Marriage in the sections of their book titled:

Challenges to Revisionists
Comprehensive Union
The State and Marriage
What’s the Harm?
Justice and Equality
A Cruel Bargain?
Conclusion

I have often said that the only governmental involvement in marriage was for the purpose of establishing the legal and economic framework for a heterosexual couple to reproduce and raise children to become contributing members of society. The only government involvement in marriage after the fact is that if something happens to the marriage (i.e., Death, Abandonment, Abuse, Divorce, etc.), the government can step in and determine what is best for the children. Any other reasons should be left to the Liberties and Freedoms of the individuals involved.

As for divorce, we have made divorce so easy and convenient that the spouses involved can float in and out of marriages indiscriminately. Divorce is sometimes necessary when the conjugal view of marriage is not being fulfilled, but in the revisionist's view of marriage, divorce is common when one member of the marriage no longer feels emotional or sexual fulfillment. Hence, the high divorce rate in America can mostly be attributed to the revisionist view of marriage.

Those that believe in a conjugal view of marriage see marriage as only between a heterosexual couple, while those that believe in a revisionist view of marriage have no difficulties with homosexual marriage, and some even believe in marriage with multiple spouses. The ultimate question to be resolved is what type of marriage is best for society. While there may be no turning back on homosexual marriage, we need to discuss and address the societal issues and concerns of the revisionists’ view of marriage.

Transgendered Rights

Transgendered Rights are the right to choose their choice of public accommodations (restrooms, locker rooms, showers, etc.), participation on sporting teams, integration into work and school environments, and medical treatment of their choice based on their sexual identity rather than biological sex. These Transgendered Rights often conflict with the non-Transgendered Rights of Personal Privacy and Parental Authority. Nobody denies the rights of Transgendered persons to be treated with respect and dignity, but Transgendered persons need to respect the rights of non-Transgendered persons. Today, however, it is assumed that the rights of a transgendered person supersede the rights of a non-transgendered person. This supersedure is not justifiable when it infringes on the Natural, Human, and Civil Rights of an individual. It also leads to harmful emotional distress and disparities of the unfairness of outcomes of competitive activities with the non-transgendered person. There is also some evidence that it may endanger the safety of non-transgendered persons when transgendered pretenders use Transgenderism as an excuse to engage in actions that are criminal.

Even the most innocuous of Transgendered Rights can have negative repercussions, as explained by Megyn Kelly in the article “Why I’m Done with ‘Preferred Pronouns’”. An intellectual, philosophical, and reasoned discourse on Transgenderism and Transgender Rights is When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment by Ryan T. Anderson.

In the introduction to the book “When Harry Became Sally”, Dr. Anderson states that:

“America is in the midst of what has been called a ‘transgendered movement’. Not long ago, most Americans had never heard of transgendered identy, but within a space of a year it became a cause claiming the mantle of civil rights. A discordant gender identity is said to represent who a person really is, by contrast with the sex ‘assigned at birth’, and therefore any failure to accept and support a transgendered identity amounts to bigotry. We are told that not treating people as the gender that they claim to be is discriminatory. But is it true that a boy could be ‘trapped’ in a girl’s body? Is our sex merely ‘assigned’ to us? Can modern medicine ‘reassign’ sex? What is the most loving and helpful response to the condition of gender dysphoria, a profound and often debilitating sense of alienation from one’s bodily sex? Should our laws accept and enforce a subjective notion of gender?”

He then goes on to explore the topics of Transgenderism in the sections of his book titled:

Our Transgendered Movement
What the Activists Say
Detransitioners Tell Their Stories
What Makes Us a Man or a Woman
Transgendered Identity and Sex “Reassignment”
Childhood Dysphoria and Desistance
Gender and Culture
Policy on the Common Interest

He concludes that:

“Gender ideology has made rapid inroads into our culture and public policy. Hollywood and various media outlets portray transgendered identities and transitioning in a heroic light, or a simply normal. The government has brought lawsuits against ‘gender identity discrimination.’ Corporations boast of their transgendered-friendly policies. Powerful interests have launched boycotts of states that don’t get with the program. Even so, ordinary Americans recognize the transgendered movement to be a politically correct fad built on a shaky platform, and many are pushing back. This book is intended to arm them with knowledge.”, as well as “What’s at stake in the transgendered movement is the human person. If trans activists succeed in their political agenda, our nation’s children will be indoctrinated in a harmful ideology, and some will live by its lies about their own bodies, at great cost to themselves physically, psychologically, and socially. Live will be ruined, but pointing out the damage will be forbidden. Dissent from the transgendered worldview will be punished in schools, workplaces, and medical clinics. Trying to live in accordance with the truth will be made harder.”

In today’s America, Transgenderism is being imposed upon society, an imposition by Executive rules and regulations and Judicial decisions. Such an imposition is an affront to the legislative process, as well as to Privacy and Parental Rights. Most distressing is the imposition of Transgenderism instruction in K12 education for the purpose of influencing their mores upon children and then allowing the children to make transgender decisions about their sexuality. Transgenderism is also being thrust into the public square of Big Tech, Mainstream Media, Mainstream Cultural Media, Modern Big Business, Modern Education, and Social Media, where it cannot be easily ignored and is often a smear upon those forced to view this thrusting. Polite and respectful words and deeds by Transgenderism Activists and Activism have been replaced by in-your-face confrontations, much to the degradation and degeneration of our society.

Assisted Suicide Rights

A friend of mine asked me what I thought about Assisted Suicide, and I replied that I was rather ambivalent about Assisted Suicide. This ambivalence was mainly because I had not examined nor thought much about Assisted Suicide. My ambivalence was also of concern that if Assisted Suicide was not implemented properly, it could result in undue pressure on a person to commit Assisted Suicide, and in the hands of a malevolent state could be utilized to compel suicide. However, my friend’s question piqued my interest, and I decided to examine and think about Assisted Suicide.

I, therefore, decided to do an Amazon search for books on Assisted Suicide. I discovered that most of the books were in favor of Assisted Suicide, but I was searching for a book that presented an intellectual, philosophical, and reasoned discourse on Assisted Suicide. I discovered a book, “Assisted Suicide: The Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization” by Kevin Yuill, who is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland Department of Culture and holds a Doctor of Philosophy. While Professor Yuill concludes that Assisted Suicide should not be legalized, he does this by rationally examining both sides of this issue to reach his conclusion. While you may not agree with his conclusion, the points, and counterpoints he makes, both for and against Assisted Suicide, are food for thought.

This book looks at both sides of the argument, and it questions the assumptions behind the discussion. Yuill shows that our attitudes towards suicide – not euthanasia – are most important to our attitudes towards Assisted Suicide. Critical of both sides of the argument, this book questions the assumptions behind the discussion. Although this book was quite expensive and written and styled in an academic manner, I decided to purchase a used copy of this book to learn more about Assisted Suicide. I also read an article by Kevin Yuill, “The liberal, humanist case against assisted dying—The assisted-dying campaign is not as reasonable or humane as it appears”, which outlines his concerns against Assisted Suicide as:

The language of assisted dying.
A fear-mongering campaign.
The freedom to die?
Lives worth living.
A dark history.
Against assisted dying.

As he has stated in this article:

“The campaign to legalize assisted dying appears reasonable and compassionate. Its advocates claim it would allow us to legally put an end to the unnecessary suffering of those who want to die. Although it looks reasonable and humane, this campaign to legalize assisted dying is anything but.”

And:

“Legalizing assisted dying should not be regarded as a simple step to bring relief to a very few. It is a huge step that will lead to some people’s lives – on physical, or sometimes mental grounds – being deemed not worth living. That is a dire and dangerous situation.”

The book further explores these and other topics of Assisted Suicide in the sections of his book titled:

Defining the Terms
An Analysis of the Key Arguments on Both Sides
The Origins of the Right-To-Die Movement
Considering Suicide
For Abortion, Against Assisted Suicide
The Coercive Implications of Legalization

The main difficulty I have with this book is Section 5—For Abortion, Against Assisted Suicide, in that he fails to fully address the humanity of the unborn, instead asserting that “Destroying an embryo is clearly not murdering a person” (emphasis added). The arguments that he then presents to justify having both a pro-abortion and an anti-Assisted Suicide opinion are based on this assertion. If this assertion is incorrect, then his arguments in this section are fallacious. This assertion is fully addressed in Chapter One of the book I utilized for my previous discussion on Abortion Rights, and in my Chirp on “07/09/23 Destroying an Embryo”, I discuss this assertion and the other problems that I have with this section.

This book also examines the issue of the autonomy of the person contemplating suicide, their rights and morality in doing so, and their impacts on institutionalized Assisted Suicide. As he has noted in this book, “. . . the whole connection between autonomy, rights, and Assisted Suicide is illusory.”

Assisted Suicide is ultimately about suicide. Most suicides or attempted suicides are for reasons other than that which are common reasons for Assisted Suicide. For those suicides or attempted suicides, we should be compassionate and caring for those persons and attempt to provide them with psychological or medical assistance before the suicide or before and after an attempted suicide. The question is, does a person have the right to take their own life, either by personal actions or by Assisted Suicide? This is a philosophical and moral question with no easy answer, as Chapter 4 of the book superbly highlights and points out:

“Anyone, with determination and a little forward planning, can cause his or her own death. It makes no sense to outlaw suicide, but nor should we enshrine suicide as a right. It is a question beyond the reach of law, a fundamental part of the human condition where the law cannot nor should not go. It is something any competent human can achieve with or without legitimation in law.”

However, institutionalizing Assisted Suicide as a medical treatment beyond moral judgment is an attempt to replace the moral, ethical, philosophical, theological, historical, and sociological meaning of life and death with a medical one. By re-imagining death as therapy, Assisted Suicide advocates effectively remove life’s meaning. Legalizing Assisted Suicide ultimately makes suicide a bureaucratic and judicial decision rather than a personal decision. It restricts Assisted Suicide to those the government deems worthy while excluding suicide to others. As European law has stated:

(I would also note that this principle of law would be applicable if an embryo is determined to have human rights.)

As to the reasons for a person to request Assisted Suicide, the 2009 Oregon Death with Dignity Report stated: ‘As in previous years, the most frequently mentioned end-of-life concerns were: loss of autonomy (93.8%), decreasing ability to participate in activities that make life enjoyable (93.8%), and loss of dignity (78.5%). Pain was not mentioned.’ Another study surveyed social workers who had received requests from hospice patients for assistance with suicide noted that ‘the desire to control the circumstances of death, the wish to die at home, loss of independence or fear of such loss, and loss of dignity or fear of such loss were the most important reasons for requesting prescriptions for lethal medications.’ These findings are consistent with every major study of Assisted Suicide throughout the world.

Assisted Suicide advocates cloak their arguments under the guise of "Natural, Human, and Civil Rights", as I have Chirped on “07/08/23 Under the Mantle of Civil Rights”. They often use "Torturous and Convoluted Reasoning", "Obfuscation, Smoke, and Mirrors", "Euphemisms, Doublespeak, and Disingenuousness", and “The Perversion of the English Language” to be elusive rather than clarifying what they mean and want. Opponents of Assisted Suicide often use religious dogma when the Bible says nothing about suicide, and they often do not utilize humanistic reasons for their opposition, as well as they use scare tactics (of a slippery-slope nature) to justify their opposition.

The proponents of Assisted Suicide insist that Assisted Suicide would be safe, legal, and limited with legal protections against abuse. However, I am old enough to remember when the proponents of abortion insisted that they wanted to make abortion “Safe, Legal, and Rare”. Somewhere along the way, “Rare” was forgotten, and commonplace and desirable replaced rare. I am, therefore, very concerned that limited Assisted Suicide with legal protections against abuse will become forgotten, and the state will intervene and make Assisted Suicide commonplace and/or desirable. In doing so, medical professionals or the state will exert undue psychological pressure on the very ill or dying persons to choose Assisted Suicide.

Whereas we need not honor a patient’s wish to commit suicide, we must honor the patient’s request to end treatment. Why? It is not, as a ‘distinction between a patient’s rejecting the burdensomeness of medical treatment and a patient rejecting the burdensomeness of life’, but because not honoring the latter’s request would threaten an important basis of autonomy—the freedom from unwanted interference with our person.

An alternative to Assisted Suicide is Hospice Care, as Hospice Care often alleviates the concerns of those who would request Assisted Suicide. I have utilized Hospice Care for my father and mother (while they were in a nursing home) and for my father-in-law when he was living with me, my wife, and my daughter in our home. This was a very caring and supportive experience for all involved, and I expect that I will opt for Hospice Care when my death approaches. I may also choose to refuse medications or extraordinary measures to prolong my life as circumstances may dictate. I would hope that I never reach the point where I would seriously consider suicide, but one does not know until faced with a situation that would prompt this consideration.

At the conclusion of this book, he asserts, “What appears to be a simple legislative move affecting very few persons who are suffering, I have shown, is instead pregnant with meaning and implications far beyond the few directly affected.” He comments, “It is changes to our culture that are the most concerning about the drift towards legitimizing assisted suicide.” for the following reasons:

First, this book has demonstrated that legalizing assisted suicide is unnecessary.
Second, I have located the development of this controversy within its historical context.
Third, I have shown that the arguments of both sides have ill-served those who want to clarify the issue.
Fourth, the harms that attend our acceptance of institutionalized assisted suicide.

The Declaration of Independence states that all men are “. . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” and makes no mention of a right to die. Indeed, Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness are not possible in death. Assisted suicide is not the pursuit of Happiness but the pursuit of relief from physical or mental anguish.

After reading this book, I must conclude that Assisted Suicide is not a good social policy, as it is harmful to the individual and to society. I am, therefore, opposed to Institutionalized Assisted Suicide.

Conclusions

The American people have always wrestled with the question of our "American Ideals and Ideas" and how to structure our government and society to preserve and extend these American Ideals and Ideas. The great issue of the 19th century in America was Slavery, while the great issues of the 20th century were the preservation of democracy in the world and the establishment of civil rights for non-white Americans. The great issues that we face at the beginning of the 21st century are Abortion, Homosexual Marriage, Transgendered, and Assisted Suicide Rights. The issues of Abortion, Homosexual Marriage, Transgendered, and Assisted Suicide Rights bespeaks who we are as a people, how we value other people, and how we structure our society and government to establish a more perfect union. These are the core questions that define us as a people, and any answers to the other questions that bedevil our society must spring forth from the answers to the core questions. If we answer the core questions properly, we can be a united and strong people, but to answer these core questions improperly will result in a divided and weakened people.

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