Ligottifan95
Member
- Jul 12, 2020
- 15
I was wondering/pondering, in a theoretical, future world where the right to a peaceful, dignified death by physician assisted euthanasia and universal access to lethal barbiturates such as Nembutal becomes legal and codified into the constitution, what would be the minimum age at which one becomes entitled to and granted/afforded this right, imagining certain limits regarding age would be in place. I would presume many would concede and approve that 18 would be a rational beginning point. It is, after all, the turning point in age in which we are considered to "become" an adult under the eyes of the law and are granted certain privileges that were previously withheld. If committing a crime, an eighteen- year-old can be expected to be charged and convicted "as an adult" by the prosecuting attorney and no longer sent to juvenile detention for their period of incarceration, but to the much harsher, brutal world of "adult" prisons. It is at this point where you can be sentenced to "life without the possibility of parole" and become eligible for the death penalty/capitol punishment in the state's where this has not been done away with(I am speaking with the U.S. in mind, as this is what I am familiar with as far as legal practices and the criminal justice system). However, this gets pretty weird when we sometimes have seventeen year old offenders being tried "as adults", and sometimes even younger. I remember being quite outraged when the courts in Wisconsin were apparently trying to charge the two girls, who were 12 years old at the time, who stabbed one of their friends in the woods thinking it would appease the fictional, online creepypasta character known as Slenderman as adults! If this can fly, what even does the concept of adult/adulthood or having developed sufficient maturity mean, is it just a meaningless stamp to be arbitrarily applied at will by Lawyers who want to appear "tough" with no regards to anything related to child psychology, serious mental disorders, history of abuse, the findings in neuroscience/neurobiology, effects of the environment, and all matter of psychosocial determinants and the confluence of influences pertaining to the evolution/shaping/formation of behavior in the individual?
Anyway, if one still insists that even eighteen is too young on the age spectrum to be able to acquire the "right to a graceful exit" or "right to a medically assisted self-deliverance", then they better radically change the legal system and no longer charge eighteen year olds as adults and sentence them to life imprisonment or hand out the death penalty, they better prohibit the sale of firearms to them, they better stop allowing them into the military, and they better no longer charge an eighteen-year-old male with statutory rape if he has, for all intents and purposes, consensual sex with a 16 year old girl that goes to his high school and being accused of molestation(of course then we have the contradicting, inconvenient problem of the age of consent varying between states, some having it declared at 16 or 17 instead of 18). If 18 is too young to apply for and receive euthanasia in a fairly short amount of time, then the whole legal system must be thrown out and rearranged and the time of being officially classified as reaching "adulthood" altered. Then you get the really big "elephant in the room" issue, which to me is the subject of pregnancy and procreation. Currently we deny the right to die for anyone, yet at the same anyone at any age can get pregnant, reproduce, and be responsible for the around the clock care, maintenance, supervision, dependences, and severe challenges of raising a human infant/child. No license. No mandatory psychiatric evaluations. No test for competency. No compulsory parenting classes. No drug tests. No nothing. So, if an eighteen year old woman or any age beyond that wants to be able to be granted voluntary assisted s#icide(or voluntarily get sterilized with a tubal ligation or bilateral salpingectomy for that matter), she will be surely rejected, but somehow someone even younger is totally mature, capable, informed, and fully responsible and has the guaranteed liberty to carry a pregnancy to term for nine months and procreate without question, and in fact(with the reversal of laws protecting the right to abortion in the conservative, evangelical 'Bible Belt' states), be FORCED to go through this pregnancy and childbirth unwillingly. Sorry, I just keep coming back to this, in my view, blatant absurdity and societal double standard whereby you are paternalistically deemed "irrational", "lacking clarity of thought", or "outright 'crazy'" if you wish to end your own life, but at the same time a sixteen-year-old can be living in a trailer or slum or living in some impoverished, crime-riddled neighborhood can pop out a baby, then another one every goddamn year if she decides to, is casually accepted, condoned, and normalized, even glorified to an extent on our reality TV programming in America with shows like '16 And Pregnant' or 'Unexpected'.
Anyway, if one still insists that even eighteen is too young on the age spectrum to be able to acquire the "right to a graceful exit" or "right to a medically assisted self-deliverance", then they better radically change the legal system and no longer charge eighteen year olds as adults and sentence them to life imprisonment or hand out the death penalty, they better prohibit the sale of firearms to them, they better stop allowing them into the military, and they better no longer charge an eighteen-year-old male with statutory rape if he has, for all intents and purposes, consensual sex with a 16 year old girl that goes to his high school and being accused of molestation(of course then we have the contradicting, inconvenient problem of the age of consent varying between states, some having it declared at 16 or 17 instead of 18). If 18 is too young to apply for and receive euthanasia in a fairly short amount of time, then the whole legal system must be thrown out and rearranged and the time of being officially classified as reaching "adulthood" altered. Then you get the really big "elephant in the room" issue, which to me is the subject of pregnancy and procreation. Currently we deny the right to die for anyone, yet at the same anyone at any age can get pregnant, reproduce, and be responsible for the around the clock care, maintenance, supervision, dependences, and severe challenges of raising a human infant/child. No license. No mandatory psychiatric evaluations. No test for competency. No compulsory parenting classes. No drug tests. No nothing. So, if an eighteen year old woman or any age beyond that wants to be able to be granted voluntary assisted s#icide(or voluntarily get sterilized with a tubal ligation or bilateral salpingectomy for that matter), she will be surely rejected, but somehow someone even younger is totally mature, capable, informed, and fully responsible and has the guaranteed liberty to carry a pregnancy to term for nine months and procreate without question, and in fact(with the reversal of laws protecting the right to abortion in the conservative, evangelical 'Bible Belt' states), be FORCED to go through this pregnancy and childbirth unwillingly. Sorry, I just keep coming back to this, in my view, blatant absurdity and societal double standard whereby you are paternalistically deemed "irrational", "lacking clarity of thought", or "outright 'crazy'" if you wish to end your own life, but at the same time a sixteen-year-old can be living in a trailer or slum or living in some impoverished, crime-riddled neighborhood can pop out a baby, then another one every goddamn year if she decides to, is casually accepted, condoned, and normalized, even glorified to an extent on our reality TV programming in America with shows like '16 And Pregnant' or 'Unexpected'.
