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.
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.