Fuensanta always said that if we are not free to choose the manner of our own death, than we are not truly free in our own life.

Peter Singer, writing for Project Syndicate reports here on the ramifications and context of a new study out of Canada that makes a pressing ethical argument for allowing ill patients to choose manner in which they end their own lives:

The ethical basis of the panel’s argument is not so much the avoidance of unnecessary suffering in terminally ill patients, but rather the core value of individual autonomy or self-determination. “The manner of our dying,” the panel concludes, “reflects our sense of what is important just as much as do the other central decisions in our lives.” In a state that protects individual rights, therefore, deciding how to die ought to be recognized as such a right.

To which I imagine Fuensanta would have said “No shit.”

(hat tip to Andrew Sullivan)