this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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On a brisk day at a restaurant outside Chicago, Deb Robertson sat with her teenage grandson to talk about her death.

She’ll probably miss his high school graduation. She declined the extended warranty on her car. Sometimes she wonders who will be at her funeral.

Those things don’t frighten her much. The 65-year-old didn’t cry when she learned two months ago that the cancerous tumors in her liver were spreading, portending a tormented death.

But later, she received a call. A bill moving through the Illinois Legislature to allow certain terminally ill patients to end their own lives with a doctor’s help had made progress.

Then she cried.

“Medical-aid in dying is not me choosing to die,” she says she told her 17-year-old grandson. “I am going to die. But it is my way of having a little bit more control over what it looks like in the end.

That same conversation is happening beside hospital beds and around dinner tables across the country, as Americans who are nearing life’s end negotiate the terms with themselves, their families and, now, state lawmakers.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 7 months ago (38 children)

We need a federal constitutional amendment of bodily autonomy. Abortions, tattoos, personal drug use, gender reassignment, plastic surgery, suicide, neuralink, etc. All the same issue: My body, fuck off. You can make it more complicated than that but it’s not.

It doesn’t matter whether you agree with face tattoos or not. Nobody is making you get one. It’s not your concern. An artist can choose not to give face tattoos, as a doctor can choose whether they want to give a vasectomy to a young child-free man. But the government should have no say about what a person is allowed to do or have done to their own body. The government can regulate to make it safer, but not disallow.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (36 children)

Though I mostly agree with you, I think its a more complicated issue than the picture you're painting.

If I want to kill myself, it's my life right? Only many times people get suicidal due to mental illness or hardship and don't really want to does it's more an "temporary issue", if you will, that can pass with time, or can be cured with medication, therapy, or resolving the situation that caused the suicidal thoughts. So government steps in and outright stop you. Euthanasia laws exist to make sure that people only end their lives when there is no way for the person to continue living without suffering, and it requires some bureaucracy.

Facial tattoos? Sure, do what you want but I think many people underestimate the issues that will enter their lives if they get them. It might cost you a great job, you ready for that? I'd say regulations for that should require like 30 days for you to think about what you are about to do..

Gender reassignments? Sure, but... At what age are we going to allow that? I've seen way too many people saying it's okay for any kid at 5 years old. I've seen some kids where at 5, it's pretty clear that yeah, this kid is different. I've also personally seen 10 year olds where it was clear that the parents were pushing it on the child and then the school and everything around the child jumped on the bandwagon and kept supporting the parents decision z not the child's decision.

Persona drug use, sure. There are more than enough drugs, however that WILL destroy your life. There is no good outcome for someone using meth, for example l, outside a medical treatment, perhaps. So you do outright forbid that. Same for opioids, or are you going to tell me that free availability of opioids is a good idea?

Vaccines, anyone? Thanks to anti scientific and illiterate conspiracy idiots, measles are back and brace yourself for polio. Those fuckers that spread this bullshit should be locked up for murder, IMHO. There is no personal choice with vaccines, you fucking take them, or you will cause the suffering of others around you so shut up and take them.

Hell, even things like seatbelts can, should, and must be forced by government because if you don't, you get the idiots believing that seatbelts are dangerous because "insert stupid story here" so I let my 5 year old in the front seat right next to me, both without seat belt going 120kmh down the freeway. People like that should have their kids taken away, honestly, because they can't be responsible for a cat, let alone a child.

Bodily autonomy is not as easy as it seems, a lot of idiots need to be protected from themselves, and the rest of us must be protected from those idiots too. By law.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Drugs can be regulated by availability, not by illegality of ingestion. It can be illegal to sell.

If circumcision is legal, gender reassignment should be as well. Both are voluntary genital surgeries that are medically unnecessary. I don’t agree with it, but it’s none of my business. That’s a decision for kids and their parents and doctors to make.

Seatbelts can be a condition of using public roads, same as the minimum drinking age of 21 is actually a condition for federal highway funding. Same for vaccines, you don’t have to but you can’t go to public school, get into stadiums, or fly in airplanes. And they should expect quarantine procedures in hospitals and higher health insurance, Do I think people should be vaccinated, absolutely, but if they don’t want to they should just face whatever repercussions are reasonable - but it doesn’t need to be illegal to be unvaccinated.

Like I said, you can make it more complicated, but I don’t think it is. Just because it’s legal, doesn’t mean it’s unregulated. The government can impose regs to make us safer and slow us down from trying to hurt ourselves, but they have no business imposing laws that limit a basic and fundamental human right, to decide what to do to their own body.

For suicide I would imagine a compassionate therapy rehab-like system. You get checked in and go through a few weeks, they try psychedelics or whatever might help you, and if you still want to when it’s through you get a permit and a lethal injection. Better than having people leap off bridges because they’re out of options. Or overdose on painkillers and burden the healthcare system. Or traumatize their family. By the way the government spends a lot of money on suicide barrier rails on bridges that could be better spent on treatment facilities like the one I’m describing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Drugs can be regulated by availability, not by illegality of ingestion

I generally don't disagree with you, but just want to point out that killing legal ways to get drugs usually doesn't stop people from getting them, instead it just makes the black market flourish and makes it harder to make sure you're getting clean stuff. When it comes to drugs, efforts need to be on education, prevention and rehabilitation, rather than criminalizing any part of the process

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Agreed. I was thinking about prescriptions, not illegal drugs. But it’s clear with fentanyl and other prescription drugs that even that is not working. I think the government should be focused on purity, safety, and non-religious rehab. I don’t think the education part is really helping, except for websites like erowid.

But bodily autonomy only really covers ingesting. Perhaps that could make drug tests unconstitutional.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Perhaps that could make drug tests unconstitutional.

Heavily depends on the context, I'd say? Being drunk while driving should absolutely stay illegal, and having drug tests for that would be a necessity I guess

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That’s like seatbelts, a condition for a privilege. We also condition that drivers have good enough vision, but that doesn’t violate any rights. I was thinking of drug tests for employment.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Ah, yeah, for employment that's different, sure. That doesn't really seem to be a thing here in Germany (might even be illegal?), so didn't think of that

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