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Comment by smeej | Hacker News Reader

Is "force" in play here?

"Refusing to assist someone in doing something" seems to be different from "forcing someone to do whatever was already going to happen if they didn't do the thing you refused to help them do" to me.

It seems to me that it's not "force" unless there's an alteration to the natural course something takes by default. So in this case, "continuing to live for awhile" is the default natural course. Refusing to assist someone in altering that natural course isn't the same as "forcing them to continue living."

Likewise with pregnancy, the default natural course is to remain pregnant until miscarriage or birth. Refusing to assist (or allow someone else to assist) someone in altering that natural course isn't the same as "forcing someone to remain pregnant."

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That's fine if you're talking about the right for individual doctors to not help someone with something, but if the default course of events would have been "someone helping someone do something", banning that help is, in your own words, forcing them. While I personally think suicide is a terrible answer for almost literally anything, I respect others don't feel the same way and might seek assisted suicide.

In fact it sounds like, and forgive me if I assume incorrectly, your argument is meant to be opposed to assisted suicide, but I would use the exact same argument in favor of it, all forms of recreational drugs, (ethically produced) porn, and other such things that harm no one except potentially the person making the decision. Obviously there's a lot of grey area there but we don't need to get super pedantic.

I think I'm using "force" much more literally than this. This is an, "Objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by a force," situation.

If something is already underway, like a person is already alive or a pregnancy has already begun, it has a path along which it will continue without requiring additional force to reach it. "Force" is only necessary to change the course.

An object in motion is not forced to stay in motion. That's what happens in the absence of force.

Again, you're really using the idea of the 'natural' course of events that just suits your argument. Unless you believe in destiny, predetermination, etc., there is no path along which either of those things will continue without requiring additional force to reach it.

For a person to continue living or a pregnancy to continue, they must continually exert, collect, and consume energy in the form of food and water. Why isn't that additional force? The 'natural' course of events, without any outside 'force', is for everyone and every living thing to drop dead in a couple of days tops.

"Okay, but obviously living beings were designed to continue living, seeking energy to continue sustaining their existence is obviously a natural course of events" you might say, but why does it have to end there? Why isn't the very natural path that all humans begin on, one of being a social creature that desires to assist others in their tribe, the 'default' force as well?

It really seems like there can't be any clear cut answer, and it's just philosophical sleight of hand. You also haven't addressed the point that if one person wants to help the other, preventing that is clearly a form of force.

The only conclusion to your argument is that there is no such thing as nature or a natural course, that anything and everything is entirely subject to the actions of the people involved. This simply isn't so, and betrays a complete and total lack of contact with anything biological, natural, or even just physical.

The whole conversation is about taking action to end someone's life, and whether anyone who does not take action to assist someone in ending their life is forcing them to continue living. "Being alive" has a biological meaning and a natural course. These aren't just things we get to define as we will.

While I admire the gymnastics you're putting your mind through to try to maintain shortening someone's life intentionally could even remotely be considered "the natural course" such that force would have to be applied to prevent it, the only way to get there is to negate meaning in any word or any thing other than what any particular person ascribes to it.

Virtually by definition, no one can join you in your solipsism, so I'm afraid this conversation has run its course.

So by that reasoning if the FDA made abortion pills OTC and anyone could order and use them, no one would be helping them take it, so it wouldn't be about assistance anymore. Yes they could use a coat hanger or chew up a bunch of juniper bark/berries, but that has a lot of risks.

Almost, but not quite. Making the pill itself is still a form of assistance.

The nearer analogy would be if someone published a recipe and instructions for making the pill.

I think that would still be "assistance," but much more likely to be covered under free speech laws, that disseminating information about something (publishing instructions) is generally already protected.

Even then, though, were such publication to be banned, it would still be the case that nobody is being "forced to remain pregnant."

You're right that that is assistance, but how is literally forcing someone/some corporation from assisting someone not forcing the end result of them remaining pregnant? The idea of the 'natural course of events' is doing a metric ton of heavy lifting here for your argument, where does something begin or end being the 'natural' course of events? You can argue that 'natural' includes all the biological processes of living/dying, becoming pregnant/giving birth, but why doesn't it include the other biological processes of other human beings deciding to exert effort to provide assistance that are opposing the other biological process?

I addressed this in response to your other comment above. I'd give the same answer here.

One set of pills for type 2 diabetes induced by cushings syndrome. Make it OTC. Second set of pills for gastric ulcers induced by NSAIDS. Make it OTC.

Those are both primary uses for those drugs so manufacturing and delivery isn't knowing assistance.

Then you suggest it is legal free speech for me to divulge that if you take one, wait 48hrs and take the second, it is precisely what would occur if you requested a drug induced abortion in a place that allows those?

I think publishing this information would stand a strong chance of being protected under the free speech clause, even in a jurisdiction that otherwise applied penalties to anyone who would help someone procure an abortion, yes, and a much stronger chance than a doctor writing a prescription for these medications and trying to argue the prescription was "speech."

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