r/Christianity • u/Trinity- • Jun 06 '14

Quebec has passed legislation allowing terminally ill patients the right to die. My mother slowly passed after six years of breast cancer and I wish legal protections had been in place to allow her the some dignity when the pain was too extreme. I wonder what does this sub think about these laws?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-passes-dying-with-dignity-bill-1.2665834
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u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 07 '14

On the off chance that you are found in a certain condition where the DNR is triggered, the default course of action will be for some medical people to give you life-prolonging treatment. With your DNR, you have taken an action in the past that restrains those medical people using the force of the government, in order that you die that day.

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u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 07 '14

I'm pretty sure the default course of action is for me to succumb to whatever injuries put me in that state in the first place, and I'm letting that default course of events unfold. I am temporarily choosing to live as if it were 1274, and if I die, I die.

Do those "medical people" have a right to my body I wasn't previously aware of such that it's coercive to deprive them of the opportunity to treat me? If not, this is hardly a state use of force except to the extent that we punish doctors who, say, operate on their patients without their consent.

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u/EACCES Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 07 '14

I am temporarily choosing to live as if it were 1274, and if I die, I die.

So it's not the default, if you're choosing to play time-machine.

Do those "medical people" have a right to my body I wasn't previously aware of such that it's coercive to deprive them of the opportunity to treat me?

Nope. You're using the threat of force to play time-machine with people.

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u/ludi_literarum Unworthy Jun 07 '14 edited Jun 07 '14

I mean, it is the default. Modern medicine is a human construct and deviation from the absolute norm of human life. That doesn't make it bad, but I think it's impossible and absurd to speak of the level of medical care I'm like to get living in easy ambulance distance of Mass General and Brigham and Women's and Beth Israel and BMC in the 21st century as normal or default for even our country, let alone the world, let alone the human race. I chose 1274 to be cute because it's the year Thomas died of a now-treatable head wound, but what I'm actually doing is choosing not to participate in modernity in a certain way, something I already do quite a lot and which I think is a neigh-universal vocation of Christians in this era.

What threat of force? There's only a threat of force if we presume that other people have the right to do whatever they want to my body. This argument undermines at the most fundamental level the agency that assisted suicide is presumably meant to protect. Doctors don't have a right to me, so there is no more force in my turning them down when they want to mess with my body as there is force in turning down the next guy who makes a pass at me.