Granny Snatching: Population Control, A Debate to Die For

While much of the nation’s attention has been focused on the political maneuverings in Washington over budgets and debts and credit limits, an equally impassioned debate has been taking place once again, or perhaps still, on the concepts of “right to die” versus euthanasia.

The essence of the debate, which all too often gets heated and goes beyond the bounds of scholarly differences and good manners, is that some people believe individuals should have the right to say when and how their life is to be ended, especially if they are terminally ill and/or in excruciating pain that can be controlled only by powerful drugs.

On the other hand are the people who caution that once you empower bureaucrats to decide at exactly what point a life no longer has value, the initial reason for that empowerment will be expanded. This argument has many similarities to the abortion debate that in the past 40 years has gone from a woman’s right to control over her own body to defense of the late-term or so-called “partial birth abortion,” which opponents see as outright murder.

In fact, both of these debates really are about the same issue – population control. They may be couched in high-minded terms like individual rights and control of one’s own body, but what they really are about is population control.

 

The world population is in the midst of an explosive phase that some say will put an impossible burden on food and water supplies and lead to massive famines, malnutrition and disease. Rather than push for birth control, thus avoiding overpopulation by voluntarily reducing the number of pregnancies, a school of thought exists that if you terminate life at the outset on one end, and end it at a predetermined point on the far end, you can control the population.

So, since we have an aging population in the industrialized nations, and thus are finding ourselves with an endless supply of old folks who no longer contribute to their welfare, have outlived their savings and insurance, are on government support, and most important, are sick and in pain, we have limitless examples to prove the point that the “right to die” is a viable, individual option.

The debate is especially intense in the American west, in states such as Montana where a measure to approve physician assisted suicide was defeated in the last session of the state legislature, but will likely be back again in the next session.

Meanwhile, opponents to physician-assisted suicide are spreading the word through websites, such as True Dignity Vermont at http://truedignityvt.org/?p=244 that is administered by Vermont opponents to physician assisted suicide, and who have been joined on the Internet by the http://www.montanansagainstassistedsuicide.org/ in Montana.

But that doesn’t mean there is only one side to this issue. On the international scene the debate has been raging for years in Europe, including Great Britain, in Canada, Australia and elsewhere. The subject is generating sufficient interest in other areas that I was able to quickly find two polls taken by news outlets to gauge public reaction to the issue.

In one, administered here http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2011/08/should-people-have-the-legal-right-to-assisted-suicide.html by CBC News in Canada, the opponents outweigh the proponents, or did at least at the time I was writing this.

A second poll, administered here http://au.news.yahoo.com/vic/latest/a/-/newshome/9953718/7news-exclusive-death-drug-to-be-imported-to-australia in Australia was running overwhelmingly in favor of assisted suicide before it was taken down.

What all this comes down to is that we have a major debate going on under the radar with people all across the globe getting deeply involved. We don’t hear about it much from the major news outlets but I guess that’s par for the course.

Nonetheless the determination of how we will be treated as we age – for the earliest members of the Baby Boomer generation that’s only 10 years from now – may well have as much impact on us as our wills, finances and preferred funeral arrangements.

I seems a bit macabre to be talking about our own deaths and how they will occur, but it is a serious issue that should not be left until it is too late. Frankly, I don’t want a doctor, or panel of experts, or anyone else having the final decision on when my life should end. Maybe you disagree, but at least you should be able to articulate the issue and your position on it.

Maybe you can even participate in a poll or two.