Banjo

Okay, so you would not have wanted your granddaughter to have been formally given the poison the day after her informal suicide attempt, but after a few weeks when she had calmed down, it would have been okay with you for it to be done then (under the conditions you specified) if that is what she wanted?

It seems to me that you are saying that suicide is terrible if it is carried out messily, but that it is quite acceptable if it is done neatly?

That is where we strongly differ. For me the issue is not whether suicide is neat or messy, but the fact that a life is deliberately ended, and in this instance it would have been the life of a child.

You say that you agree that a grandfather has a responsibility to protect their grandchild from harm. Yet you would be willing to stand silent while your granddaughter took lethal poison in your presence. How is this not aiding and abetting her suicide?

JP

You did not provide an argument against the claim that 'all people (with VAD decision making capacity) have the right to access VAD so that their quality of life is not reduced below what they consider to be an acceptable threshold’?

You responded with ‘no. Murder, including self-murder/suicide is simply wrong’. That statement is a conclusion. It is not an argument. You need to provide supporting reasons/premises for an argument. Ethically and legally, VAD is not murder or self-murder, so you haven’t even broached the issue. VAD is consistent with a person’s wishes, murder is not.

I reject your conclusion as an unsupported opinion.

The Exit ACT submission is 117 pages long. Reading the Executive Summary alone (which summarises; it does not include details, exceptions and caveats, they are in the submission) will not provide insight into the specifics of issues, and the exceptional scenarios that might arise.

For the rest of your comments, where you tried to argue that you did not misrepresent me, I offer the following.

The Exit ACT submission discusses a scenario where a suffering terminally ill criminal has not cooperated with police. Does that person have a right to die? Yes, as every person does. Does that person have the right to have society help them? You said that I would say ‘yes’. In this instance, I and others can make compelling arguments for ‘no’. If we acknowledge a social contract—that you must cooperate fully with police before you can ask the state to assist you—then society has no obligation to assist with VAD in this instance.

That one example shows that you have misrepresented me. A person has a right to die, but I have never said that means that society must help in all instances. Please be aware that there are more complex scenarios than your conclusion, ‘self murder/suicide is simply wrong’, might allow.

Until you can develop a sound argument against VAD, I cannot accept your conclusions.
I will offer no more until you can develop a sound argument against VAD

David

Humans are created in God’s image and God has forbidden the murder of humans. That is the basis for saying that the killing of oneself is wrong.

Now you can dismiss this, as I expect you will, however, I would be very interested to see how you can justify the moral claims you make from a secular standpoint. For a start, you place a very strong emphasis on respecting personal autonomy. You obviously have a preference for that position but why, in a secular/material universe, should anyone care what your preference on that is, or indeed, your preferences about anything else?

In such a universe there are no objective values and if it is in someone’s interests to trample your preferences, and they have the wherewithal to do it, there is no moral basis for deterring them.

You appeal repeatedly to “rights”. Again, what is a “right” in a material universe? There is no intrinsic force to a “right”, rather it is just something made up as a means to try and coerce others to go along with the preferences of some.

Of course, laws can be passed to see that certain preferences are enforced but there is no equivalence between laws and morality. Laws can be whatever a majority of people (or the most powerful or influential) want them to be, but that doesn’t make them morally “right”. Did legalising slavery make it morally right?

So, if you want an argument from me to justify my position, then equally you should be prepared to justify your position with an argument.

JP

Before we move on, you must make a sound argument. You have not done so. Your argument 'Humans are created in God’s image and God has forbidden the murder of humans. That is the basis for saying that the killing of oneself is wrong.’ is not valid or sound and should be rejected. There are no reasons to accept your two stated premises and there are too many unstated premises that must be justified. These include does the god called God exist, why its/her/his command is important, is its command right and why should we accept it anyhow.

Can you demonstrate that your god called God exists? If you cannot, can you see why we have no basis to accept your argument (or previous commentary)?

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Dear JP,

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You wrote :

1. « It seems to me that you are saying that suicide is terrible if it is carried out messily, but that it is quite acceptable if it is done neatly? »

It’s interesting, JP, to see that you interpret what I wrote in terms of order and disorder. I shall keep that in mind.

And you add :

2. « That is where we strongly differ. For me the issue is not whether suicide is neat or messy, … »

Quite the contrary, JP. That is where we strongly agree. For me too, “the issue is not whether suicide is neat or messy”.

3. « You say that you agree that a grandfather has a responsibility to protect their grandchild from harm. »

No, I didn’t say that JP, but, naturally, I do consider that a grandfather should and would undoubtedly do whatever he could to protect his grandchild from harm if he were in a position to do so.

4. « Yet you would be willing to stand silent while your granddaughter took lethal poison in your presence. How is this not aiding and abetting her suicide? »

According to the latest statistics of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2022 :

• deaths by suicide represented 0.9% of all deaths in children aged 14 and below.

• there has been a greater than 3-fold increase in the rate of intentional self-harm hospitalisations in females aged 14 and below (from 19 hospitalisations per 100,000 population to 72)

There were approximately 5.5 million children aged 14 and below in Australia in 2022, composed of roughly half and half of each sex. This means there were about 2,000 girls aged 14 and below, like my granddaughter, hospitalised in Australia for intentional self-harm that year.

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(Continued …)

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(Continued …)

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The average success rate of suicides is 7%. Therefore those 2,000 girls represented roughly 93% of the total girls who attempted suicide. In other words, about 2,150 girls aged 14 and below attempted suicide and 150 succeeded.

It is illusory to think that parents and grandparents can totally control and protect their children and grandchildren. If a child wants to commit suicide, he or she will find a way to do it.

What I am saying is not that I would help them do it, but just as I would prefer to jump out the window of a skyscraper on fire rather than burn to death, I would like them to have a “good death” rather than an atrocious one by employing whatever means they can lay their hands on in a terrible state of despair.

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