I am writing with regard to the proposed bill to legalize assisted suicide in New Hampshire, which you have been (rightly) concerned about. I was horrified to learn that this is being proposed and packaged as a “medical freedom” bill.
I think one aspect you have not yet argued that is fundamentally important is that it is WORSE than the beginning of a slippery slope to eugenicism, such as Canada and the UK have undertaken in horrible ways. New Hampshire tried but ultimately failed to pass several key parental rights bills, including clear language protecting the decision-making rights of parents for minor children in medical scenarios. Children will NOT be the decision-makers for themselves right from the get-go.
It will literally be a life-and-death battle between parents and hospitals for the lives of children right from the beginning.
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Because high profile cases like that of Ewa Kowalski are sadly not unique; children and minors are frequently removed from their parents’ guardianship in hospital situations when some officiating person does not see eye to eye with the parent or feels challenged by them (see the case of Justine Pelletier, from Connecticut, a few years ago, and Boston Children’s.) This is moving backward, not forward, in the cause of freedom!
I am morally opposed to suicide, but if you ask me, the issue is nowhere near being a philosophically consistent freedom position, either. One cannot simply ignore all the other legal apparatus and what it means in conjunction with one’s proposed legislation. If those freedom people who philosophically support the concept of a right to a death wish to formulate that as legislation and remain consistent, they must do so only after they have successfully warded off the state from the rights of parents, families, the religious, etc., in medical situations. Something that was grossly violated, I may add, for many thousands of Americans for the duration of Covid.
From the beginning, it is my belief that such a bill as this, if passed, will enable hospitals and doctors to take the decision to terminate out of the hands of parents and into their own when it comes to children. They always want our children.
From a very concerned mother of four and staunch supporter of genuine medical freedom.