NationStates Jolt Archive

My opinions were recently limited to allowing optional euthanasia, not allowing it, or banning euthanasia outright. I picked allowing it, but this increased my civil rights! Why could I not mandate coercive euthanasia for the developmentally disabled? is there anytime in the future such a measure so that I can thread this path without leaving the people to their own devices? certainly, there can be euthanasia & state absolutism.

There is no such thing as 'mandatory euthanasia', it's just as illogical as 'mandatory volunteer-work'. If it isn't by ones own free choice, it's called murder. Euthanasia is always by ones own choice.

If you wish to decide over life and death of your minions, create a policy against euthanasia. After all, YOU decide when those pesky resources live or die, not them. Before you know it some otherwise productive laborers would opt death over the abuse you provide for them daily and that wouldn't be good for your nation's level of production, which means less wealth and luxury for you!

Ballotonia

Well if Euthanasia is to mean "mercy killing" then what of those who cannot decide for themselves and a second party is brought to decide who "pulls the plug," is that not also Euthanasia? There is nothing about the definition of Euthanasia to mean the individual receiving "death treatment" is the deciding individual in the matter. It is the laws of the government which decide what is "murder" or not, if it were to be an official institutionalized procedure and a sterile medical practice, only an outside demographic can declare that from their point of view as "murder." Morality is different nation to nation, culture to culture. The ancient Spartans practiced "apothetai" with deformed infants, there were no laws about it, but they certainly saw it as more humane than allowing them to live a full life that way, and the infants certainly did not decide their fate about it. So I disagree, just because it is done as a process of preemption, according to prescribed criteria, carries no oxymoronic connotations to it's actual meaning, as long as it is Euthanasia as seen for the better alternative for the individual in question and not simply a type caste elimination.

I'd agree that there should be an option for mandatory euthanasia. Not all nations are willing to spend excessive amounts of money on keeping the old, weak, and infirmed alive. I'm probably going to vote to allow it and it certainly isn't out of concern for "civil rights" of which our citizens quite rightly have few to none.