this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
594 points (99.2% liked)

News

23600 readers
3087 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (2 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 8 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 8 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 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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 8 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 8 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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Circumcision is definitely not comparable with gender reassignments. Having said that, circumcisions should be illegal (unless for medical requirements) under 18. Let's see how many people want to circumcise after 18 for their religion, won't be many I can assure you

Seatbelts are required because of physics and sometimes we simply don't allow people to be THAT stupid. Also, if you ever want to have a normal medical system, you can't have people play Russian roulette because a Facebook post told them to.

Vaccines are not about your they are about your community. We either all vaccinate and live with less suffering or we allow "freedom" and invite more suffering because again some idiots read Facebook posts that told them... Vaccines should be mandatory.

We live in the 21st century, we live in a rather awesome world thanks to science and technology. You can't pick and choose "oh but this science I don't like so we're not doing it". If you don't like science and technology, that's fine, go back to a cave in the forrest and when you're dead within the year, the problem has been resolved. So yes, you take your vaccine so others won't have to suffer and no, you don't get to learn "intelligent design" because it's stone age bullcrap that will turn you into an idiot that will fight against scientific progress.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I wear seatbelts and I’m vaccinated but I believe in freedom for others. I wish I hadn’t been circumcised, and I think it should be illegal too. It was a violation of my bodily autonomy because I was incapable of consent. An overarching constitutional amendment is what is needed to clarify why circumcision has a different legal standing than other forms of genital mutilation of minors. But I think it shouldn’t be thought of as different. I don’t think 18 is a magical age of bodily autonomy. Abortion, or other bodily choices can be made independently at younger ages.

We don’t need these endless fights over corner-cases of freedom. You spend the time all at once to determine what bodily autonomy means, and what the government’s responsibility is in protecting that fundamental human right, and under what rare circumstances one’s autonomy can be limited. You can make conditions for privileges (seatbelts for roads, vaccines for travel/crowds), but you cannot force vaccinations or brain chips, or RFID implant tags, or anything on people.