Part of the reason I posted this in relation to the post on 'when does life begin' is to prompt people to think perhaps that is the case for life. That the most honest assessment of 'life' in the early stages of pregnancy rests on the relationship between the mother and how she assesses what is happening in her body. I understand that by default that can be construed as 'pro choice', but it's deeper than that.
Elaborate? You seem to be implying that you see the question of 'life' in the context of 'beginning-of' and 'end-of' issues as partly being a question of human relationships rather than just the internal processes of different independent beings. If I'm reading you right, then I'm intrigued, because that's similar to the way these issues are treated in a lot of the Japanese bioethical texts that I've been reading lately that I alluded to.
Essentially those who are ‘pro-life’ at both ends; anti-abortion and against people choosing when and how they will die if they are terminally ill, are quasi-scientific in their understanding of life, despite considering their stance to be more emotive, more personal than their opponents. Any position that places a definitive ‘this is it for everyone’ start and stop on the spectrum of human life is based on trying to make an external definitive measure of life. The only life that anyone can experience is their own. The only life anyone can measure, or value, or weigh against others or against the prospect of non-existence is their own. If one places the action of ‘keeping someone alive’ over the decisions made by an individual to choose otherwise, then it degrades and debases that person’s life and that persons understanding of life throughout his or her period of ‘living.
Definitions are understandable from a biological and medical perspective, being as they are studies of the ‘whole’, but aren’t something that should necessarily be adhered to by the person.
There is therefore nothing ethically wrong in a person stipulating that they are not ‘dead’ until their heart stops, that their death must not be hastened and their body must remain intact after death. Likewise there is nothing ethically wrong a person wishing their life to be terminated upon brain death, to choose to end their own life at the physical and mental point of their choosing if faced with terminal illness and having their body parts used after their death. It should be of no one’s concern what one does, nor should someone else be rushing to ‘define their life for them’ to either hasten or slow the process of death based on an external definition.
For me, death is a part of someone’s life. Not the end of it. The end of life is after having gone through that process of death. Therefore like all life decisions, it is both intimate and personal.
However; that is based solely on the assumption that a person sees their life as a personal matter. Some do consider it a communal issue; that your life has an impact on others. And therefore ethically they may defer decisions to their family or loved ones. Again, this does not assume that just because you have deferred it to others, that you have deferred it to the ‘external definition’ of life (therefore making it more strict), only to a collective understanding of it, which may happen to be one that is less strict. People do ask family to help them die, to ‘take them’ to death, just as much as they ask them to be looked after ‘no matter what happens.’ If that is the families duty to that person then they should not be hindered from doing so.
Which by definition is a ‘pro-choice’ position (the relationship between pregnancy as part of a woman’s experience of living is about a thousand words by itself); all options should be made available to allow people to fully choose every possible personal and communal outcome.
Poll
