What counts as life and living?
A public debate is kicking off again about the cut-off time for a legal abortion. Sixteen years ago the limit was reduced to 24 weeks where it currently stands, because it was felt that a baby could survive at this age outside the womb. The debate today also focuses around whether medical advances now permit babies to survive at an even earlier age, and so should the limit of when abortion is permitted be brought down correspondingly.
My comment is not about the rights or wrongs of abortion. It's more that I find it curious that the idea is gaining implicit momentum in our social values that only those who can survive independently have rights to live. At the other end of the spectrum we have the elderly, or those who we consider ill beyond redemption. As a society we have started talking about when (to put it crudely) can we "switch them off". We are slowly eroding away the idea that we should protect those who need some help in surviving. It's not widespread yet, but the insidious in-roads can be spotted. Independence is becoming the crux of being worthy of living.
Doesn't it make anyone else ethically nervous that when you are your most vulnerable that society wants to get rid of you?
And then there is the idea that only those who are capable of living our kind of life are worthy of protecting. Isn't that what happened in Iraq where deaths of Iraqi civilians weren't ever reported in the same way that each casualty of the occupation forces was?
It seems that as a society only what we determine as a life worth living, a skin worth existing in, only our kind of life is what counts.
My comment is not about the rights or wrongs of abortion. It's more that I find it curious that the idea is gaining implicit momentum in our social values that only those who can survive independently have rights to live. At the other end of the spectrum we have the elderly, or those who we consider ill beyond redemption. As a society we have started talking about when (to put it crudely) can we "switch them off". We are slowly eroding away the idea that we should protect those who need some help in surviving. It's not widespread yet, but the insidious in-roads can be spotted. Independence is becoming the crux of being worthy of living.
Doesn't it make anyone else ethically nervous that when you are your most vulnerable that society wants to get rid of you?
And then there is the idea that only those who are capable of living our kind of life are worthy of protecting. Isn't that what happened in Iraq where deaths of Iraqi civilians weren't ever reported in the same way that each casualty of the occupation forces was?
It seems that as a society only what we determine as a life worth living, a skin worth existing in, only our kind of life is what counts.
posted by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed at 11:11
2 Comments:
Nice blog Mashallah.
keep up the good work.
the peace be upon you
I hear that this year many many agricultural crops haven't done so well. I also hear that peak oil is a lie. I also hear that maze and wheat and other such crops will be given to either ethonal power plant or food consuption, whoever pays more for it that is.
Could there be a posibility that the planet is heading for a mass extinction of many species. I hear that the magnetic poles are due for a flipping.
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