RE: Abortion is morally wrong
July 5, 2014 at 9:57 pm
(This post was last modified: July 5, 2014 at 10:03 pm by Jackalope.)
(July 5, 2014 at 1:34 am)Irrational Wrote: A father requests his children that, if he should ever end up having an incurable and chronically painful disease in the future, that he be allowed to undergo euthanasia.
Years later, it happens. The father is struck with such a disease. But neither the children nor the doctors in the area want to give what he asked for because of conscience. Even though the father desperately wants his life to end.
Which right to support now?
I believe rasetsu has adequately addressed your first example, so I'm going to focus on this one. We'll assume for sake of argument that both rights do in fact exist.
Which right to support? Both of them, of course. The children and the physician have their right to conscience. The father likewise has his right to die with dignity. What he *does not* have is the right to impose duty on another person against their conscience.
What you appear to be arguing for here is that the right to die with dignity implies that one has the right to require a *particular person* to kill him, or assist him in killing himself. Whom precisely is infringing on whom's rights here?
The father in this case will simply have to find someone who is willing to assist. In this context, a right to die with dignity only means that a third party cannot act to infringe upon that right - not that they can be compelled to duty.
...and that is where I make my determination as to where rights fall in the priority hierarchy - a right that would impose a duty upon another party (a "positive" right) loses to one that only requires the other party to not infringe upon the right (a "negative" right).
See - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_an...ive_rights and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_rights
