Youth Euthanasia

Sauce For Goose and Gander

New Zealand has a real problem with young people committing suicide.  Generally, no-one thinks it's a good idea.  You know, a sixteen year old hanging himself, or deliberately stepping out in front of a train--that sort of thing.

Those folk who oppose such actions--and these folk represent the vast majority, if not every adult in the country--are little more than bleeding heart fraudsters and dupes.  What on earth is wrong with a teenager taking his or her own life?  Seriously.

Long ago--well, a few decades ago--suicide used to be categorised as a sin, an ultimate act of rebellion against God.  But then God was "kicked for touch" so to speak, and the culture was suddenly awash with formal and informal fallacies, which is a polite was of saying that no-one could think straight any more.  Pretty much every social issue became filtered through emotive arguments.  In this case, when it comes to youth suicide emotion takes the form of the Appeal to Pity.  But not just the death of youth.  Assisted dying for the aged is also seen through the filter of Appeals to Pity.  This poor old person is ill, dispirited, discouraged.  If we really had pity upon him, we would help him on his way.  We would facilitate a painless, peaceful death for him.  Pity justifies such an act as morally good.

But some have sought to go beyond emotive arguments to justify helping the aged end their lives.
 They want to ground assisted suicide less in emotion and more in rational argument. There are only two things in life that are inevitable, as Mark Twain sagely observed: death and taxes.  So, death when it comes is morally good, in the same way that taxes are morally good.  The inevitable is something which conforms with Natural Law, right?  Death conforms: therefore death is part of Natural Law and is, therefore, morally right.  You can't fight Nature.

So there, my dears, is an argument for death as a moral act.  Consequently, the suicidal person who takes his own life is not doing anything morally wrong at all.  Get it.

Let's consider this matter of willing and effectuating death for older people or sick people.  We call this euthanasia--literally, "good death", from the Greek (thanos=death; eu=good).  New Zealand is awash with people--the literati, the Chattering Classes, the Media, the Commentariat--all telling us sonorously that everyone should have a right to die.  If they choose to take their own life there is nothing morally wrong with it.  It is a moral thing to do.  And then comes the kicker argument: who are you and I or anyone to oppose what another person truly wants to do.  Killing oneself is, therefore, also a freedom right.  Do I have a right to eat tomatoes if I wish?  Of course, we live in a free country.

So euthanasia is a natural law right, and it is a freedom right.  How dare anyone oppose it.  Such people who oppose are moral monsters.  Okay.  We concede the point.  You are right.  Natural Law is sovereign.  But, then, why are those who are advocating strongly for this human right to euthanize, so opposed, horrified, and apoplectic about youth suicide in New Zealand?  We just can't get it.

Wouldn't it be far more consistent for you to do all you can to assist such dying and the will-to-die amongst the young.  If suicide amongst the elderly is euthanasia, suicide amongst youth must be equally euthanasia.  After all, stepping in front of a train is messy.  Blood and guts everywhere.  People tend to get upset at that sort of thing.  Wouldn't it be far better to put them to sleep, calmly, peacefully--surrounded by friends and those they love?  Not only better, but morally consistent.  And rationalistically rational.

If the will to die amongst the aged is a "good death", then the will to die amongst youth must also be a "good death".  Youth suicide is just another form of euthanasia.  What's sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander.