Inconvenient questions...

From 30,000 ft, some inconvenient questions I've heard asked... or asked myself:

Stephen Hawking

• Total gomer, hopeless, doomed to get worse, can't survive without extraordinary intervention, icky. Let him die with dignity! Withhold food and water! Dignity uber alles!

Partial Birth Abortion

• "Fetus" lacks personhood. Dependent; parasitic even. Go ahead, poke a hole into its skull, suck its brains out and dismember it. What could possibly be "bad" about that? It's a choice, after all. Or would it be better--more humane, more natural--to lay it on a table and withhold food and water until it stops twitching and wailing? Should hospitals be equipped with soundproof drawers for such purpose?

Withholding food and water

• Merely facilitates the natural course of death. But why not tie a dry-cleaner bag over their head? How is "withholding" air any different? Or, I've heard of drowning kittens in a cage... isn't that the same thing?


• If it's humane and natural, why not use it as a means for judicial execution, or for hopelessly ill or injured animals?


• Why not extend the practice to the severely mentally retarded? There is no cure for Down Syndrome, after all. No hope whatsoever. These people (excuse me, "people") can't reason or provide for themselves. Withhold food and water-- end of problem, for them and for us!


• What about hopelessly ill or unwanted children? Being children, they lack reasoning capability or the ability to make mature decisions. Granted, they "interact" at a simplistic level; for example, a baby might smile when you tickle it, or cry when you pinch it, but these are clearly just mindless reflexes and not indicative of higher cortical function. Shouldn't their guardians have the right to make critical decisions for them? If they judge a child to be hopeless or unwanted, shouldn't food and water be withheld? What right does the state have to interfere?


• Peter Singer, the eminent Princeton ethicist, says that a woman's right to choose should extend for 28 days after birth or even longer. Senator Barbara Boxer has said a week would certainly make sense. Are they correct? If so, is withholding food and water a humane and natural way of expressing this choice?


• I read of a woman, a self-described dog-lover, who would regularly take her dogs in to be euthanized on their fifth birthday so that they wouldn't grow old and suffer a decline from their prime. Was she right? Instead of euthanasia by injection, what about withholding food and water?

...I'm just trying to figure out where the lines are drawn...