Kathleen Stock on the Case Against Assisted Death
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I think assisted death is a Rubicon. It introduces state-sanctioned killing into societies which don't even have the death penalty, you know, and that in itself should give us pause. And we need to look properly at all the implications, not just at what happens at the deathbed, but what happens across the system. And now the good fight. with Yasha Monk.
I've been thinking about politics for most of my life and on some subjects I have a strong view. And so when it comes to questions of free speech, for example, I'm pretty convinced that the benefits of a social practice far outweigh its potential costs or risks. In other areas, I feel myself really torn, not because I don't have any principles or don't know how to apply those principles, but because they seem like hard cases in which they pull in two different directions. Assisted suicide is one of those areas.
The principle that we should be sovereign over our own bodies and where we should be able to decide ourselves when to end a life of suffering if we have a horrible terminal disease seems very important. But there is also a real risk of abuse, a very real risk of social institutions broadening and broadening that concept until you get perfectly medically healthy people committing medically assisted suicide, a risk of them being pressured by doctors or family members to take this step. How do we balance between the interest in having sovereignty over our own body and the dangers of social systems and institutions failing in really consequential ways? Well, to discuss this topic today, I asked Kathleen Stock on the podcast. As you will see, Kathleen does not agree that this is a closed call.
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