14 year old Jerika Bolen of Appleton, WI has suffered her whole life from spinal muscular atrophy, which is always fatal and essentially untreatable. She is wheel-chair bound and uses a ventilator at least 12 hours of every day.
She has decided to end her own life in August by simply declining the ventilator and waiting to die, though I imagine sedation will be involved.
As a Libertarian, I fully support the right of a person to end his or her own life in these circumstances (the right of the individual to control his/her own body being fundamental), but how young is too young to make a decision like this?
If adulthood (18) is the cut-off, then is it our moral imperative as a civilized society to condemn her to 4 more years, assuming she lives that long, in excruciating agony, than to let her go as she wishes? What's our license for perpetuating these kids' pain and misery......validation of our sense of cultural morality, so we can be inspired by them, selfish hope for a miraculous recovery so our own sadness ends?
If you say let her go, then you must answer the question, if 14 is old enough, then why not 13, or 12?
Thoughts anyone?
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