The Right to Die

In spite of the almost commonplace ring which the title of this article has acquired in the course of recent public debate, one's first reaction should still be wonder. What an odd combination of words! How strange that we should nowadays speak of a to die, when throughout the ages all talk about rights has been predicated on the most fundamental of all rights-the to live. Indeed, every other ever argued, claimed, granted, or denied can be viewed as an extension of this primary right, since every particular concerns the exercise of some faculty of life, the access to some necessity of life, the satisfaction of some aspiration of life. Life itself exists not by but by natural fiat: my being alive as a sheer fact whose sole natural endorsement is its innate powers to preserve itself. But among men the fact, once there, needs the sanction of a right, because to live means to make demands on the environment and is thus conditional on being accommodated by that environment. Insofar as the environment is human, and the accommodation it accords has a voluntary element in it, such inclusive accommodation underlying all communal amounts to an implicit granting by the many of the individual's to live and his granting the same to all others. Every further right, equal or not, in natural or positive law, derives from this cardinal one and from the mutual recognition of it by its claimants. Justly, therefore, is life named first among the inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. And surely, mankind has had an arduous task, and still has, with discovering, defining, debating, obtaining, and protecting the various rights that enlarge upon the to live. How exceedingly odd then that we should lately find ourselves engrossed in the question of a to die! All the more odd, since rights are espoused to secure a blessing, and death is counted as a curse or at best something to which one must be resigned. And most odd when we reflect that with death we are not making a demand on the world, where a question of might arise, but on the contrary are quitting every possible demand. So how can the very idea of right here apply? But what if my dying or not dying were to some extent in the area of choice-mine or others'? And what if not only