The "Suicide Tourist" Filmmaker Speaks
This is an interview with the filmmaker who made the pro assisted suicide film of a man with motor neurone disease (ALS) receiving assisted suicide. He admits he did it as as advocacy effort to get us to accept the hemlock. The man who died shared the agenda.
The filmaker says the Terri Schiavo case induced him to make the film and says that the Schindlers were motivated by "religion" in trying to save Terri's life. No, they were motivated by unconditional love for her, an attribute that some people may never understand.
Of course, the interview is softball as it gets.
The filmaker also tells of a future assisted suicide that is planned in which a healthy wife will kill herself at the same time, and in the same bed, as her ill husband. But why not? If the right to die is a "fundamental right," as the Montana judge ruled, people should be able to have help killing themselves for any reason they want. Who are we to say they should be deprived of liberty?
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 11:46 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
If it's an individual inalienable right to commit suicide, why even have a law about it? Is any law what entitles people to live? Is it specifically against the law to commit suicide? I'm just asking to check on the basic premises, as suicide has never been a subject of interest to me. If it is, and if the law against suicide is valid, then helping anyone do it is a crime, just as killing anyone is a crime, and that's the end of it. It can't be legal to help someone commit suicide if it's not legal to commit suicide, plain and simple. Is there a movement to legalize suicide of oneself? If there is, is it in order to create a bridge to legalizing assisted suicide? But that's still killing someone else. Plus, if choosing for one's own life to end is illegal, then "living wills" cannot be legal. I'm sorry if this sounds simple-minded; I like things to be simple.
If taking the hemlock is illegal, and this guy has advocated it, for which on top of everything else he's provided evidence, why isn't he getting arrested?
Religion had nothing to do with the Schiavo case. I think it goes beyond unconditional love, too, and that respect for life covers it as well. No one knew for sure that she wanted to die, aside from the question of the obligation not to end a life. Plus, even if she had said she would not not to live in such circumstances, no one can say that with absolute certainty until they are in the situation; once the situation arises, that might turn out to be what they want, or it night not, and if life is a fundamental value and a fundamental right, that chance cannot be taken if there is the least possible risk. There is also a right to change one's mind and not be bound in a matter of life and death by prior statement, written or otherwise, and when there is doubt, error on the side of life is the only permissible error. Trying to get people to drink the hemlock is like trying to get people to sign living wills.
This guy is arrogating unto himself the right to impute motivations, to influence others to do what he thinks they should...that's not concern with rights, it's sociopathy, tyranny, and insanity, and again, why isn't he getting arrested?
Now we've got the suttee thing going, too. What is this, Romeo and Juliet? If she really wants to do that, why does it have to be on film? She's not going to get to watch it. What, she wants others to see it as proof of her devotion? Or as "art"? Or to encourage others to do likewise? Why does all this stuff have to be a public issue and a public presentation? If it's their own business and no one else's that someone kills themself or wants to, why try to bring the world into it? Why not just do it? It makes the statement, either way, if making a statement was the reason for doing it. This enhances the legacy? It can only be about trying to get others to do it, as the guy has said he's trying to do. It's not individual liberty, it's the Jim Jones thing in Guyana.
It's one thing to say one shouldn't be forced to live, and quite another to try to get others to die, and this, by his own statement, is the latter.
Plus, who does he think he is, that people should do what he says, and when it costs them their life, yet? Again -- Why isn't he getting arrested? If he's trying to push the envelope re the law, and he gets away with it, society is harmed. Has anyone asked him why if, he thinks it's such a great idea and wants to make an example for people, he isn't taking the hemlock himself? Oh, that's right, he's "needed" to do what he's doing. Like people haven't been dying, by suicide or otherwise, and making up their own minds, for millenia without his help. If he needs a job, there's one available for him in the prison laundry. Why isn't it being given to him?
This guy must have been something as a kid on the playground.
What scares the crap out of me is that this interviewer's comment about politics vs. personal stories smacks of movies about abortion, such as "If These Walls Could Talk," which is fictional but has the aim of humanizing the political debate. Although good for considering our current laws, I don't want to see a day when AS films are being written so that we can "see the human stories" behind them in a passive acceptance of how our culture functions.
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