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 Peg's
Polemic
Every
month, philosopher Peg Tittle casts off the calm, measured and qualified
style of her profession to deliver her opinionated and impassioned
column, exclusively for the TPM philosophy café...
Number
1. Suicide, Insurance and Dead Sugar Daddies
I've
been thinking that, with the exception of those who are paralyzed
or severely physically debilitated, people who seek euthanasia are
cowards. They are grossly inconsiderate and amazingly irresponsible.
I mean, if you're ready to die, then die. But do it yourself! Don't
ask someone else to kill you, and then live with it. What an awful
request to make, of anyone! It's your life...it's your
death.
However,
just recently the insurance connection clicked into place: if you
suicide, the company won't pay - so it's for the sake of your loved
ones that you endure or entreat...
So
all these intellectual and ethical gymnastics we're sweating over--passive/active,
terminal sedation or physician-assisted suicide, the double effect,
euthanasia or eugenics - it's all because the insurance companies
won't pay? Wouldn't it be so much easier, and, I suspect, cheaper,
to simply legislate that they must? (Especially when the suicide
simply hastens what would otherwise be a slow and painful death?)
The financial desires of a certain private sector industry should
not override our freedom to die!
Well,
they don't really. We still have the legal and moral right to die.
The insurance companies just override our desire to capitalize on
it. Which makes me think instead that we should simply legislate
against life insurance. I mean, consider: we're putting a monetary
value on an individual life.
And
just a little less questionable is the expectation that one's spouse
- whether dead or alive - provide one with money. Sure, if there's
children, well, they must be taken care of; in that case, I can
understand the desire to have insurance against the potential loss
of income that enables such care (but then let's call it income
insurance - life is surely a little different, a little more, than
income). But I'm beginning to think this whole privatized parenthood
thing is not such a good idea. Perhaps we as a society should take
on the responsibility for their support - right from the beginning.
(But then we'd have to have the right to provide some input into
that beginning in the first place...) And if there's no children,
well, GET A JOB like everyone else! (And let your husband/wife/
whatever die when and how s/he wants to.)
Peg's
Polemic will next be updated on December 1st 2000
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