134 Right to Die

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The ultimate in liberty is choosing whether to end your own life. There are all manner of dogmatic reasons that other people use who would like to take this liberty from you: religion, paternalism & selfishness, but that does not assuage the theft of your choice. A handful of States now allow physician-assisted suicide, called “death with dignity,” and several countries have been successfully practicing it for over a decade. <span lang="en">Physician-assisted suicide is always at the request and with the consent of the patient, since he or she self-administers the means of death.</span> There's a lot of oversight & built-in protections so the number is only in the 100s per year where it's available but it's gaining acceptance.</p> <p>The safeguards against illogical or irrational suicide are many-fold: the patient must have a psychiatric evaluation, personal physician & attorney, but you're never going to really prevent a committed person from taking their own life, as evidenced by over 40,000 suicides each year, and almost half a million attempted suicides, at a cost of approximately $45 billion. It's not really what you think about grandma's choice, it's about her & she'll make her own decisions. And if Uncle Roy chooses to check-out for whatever reason, you're not going to stop him by putting the people who helped him in prison. The Right to Die is the most personal Right of all, and only religious conservatism keeps everyone from having it.</p>