The Irreconcilability of a "Right to Die" with the Right to Life

There is no "right to die." There is only a right to live.

The right to live does not mean that one will be guaranteed to live at somebody else's expense. That is, somebody's right to live can only imply negative obligations on the part of others not to kill or harm that individual. Each individual with a right to live still has to make provisions to facilitate his own life; the right merely guarantees that nobody else can legitimately interfere with or disrupt these provisions.

Death may occur as a result of an individual defaulting on his right to live, but this does not imply a positive "right to die." An individual's positive "right to die" would be the right to have somebody kill him, i.e., actively interfere with his life and his right thereto. The right to live and the "right to die" are mutually incompatible. One leads to individual sanctity and sovereignty and the other -- to "mercy killings" and collectivist utilitarianism, the horrid spectacle of the masses, the bureaucrats, or sly opportunists like Michael Schiavo deciding whose lives are or are not worth living.

In the unfortunate Terri Schiavo case on 2005, if it were Michael Schiavo's personal money that was sustaining Terri on life support, he could have legitimately denied her the use of this money (provided that he were to facilitate a transfer of guardianship beforehand to ensure that Terri did not die as a result of the decision).

A right to life does not imply a positive obligation on somebody's behalf to keep one alive, except in the case of a guardian, who has made the choice, cemented by the force of law, to keep the "guarded" alive, and must thus carry out all the obligations concordant with such a choice.

However, the money used to keep Terri alive was Terri's own, having been awarded to her in the malpractice lawsuit. Moreover, the money that Terri's parents, the Schindlers, would have been using to keep her alive would have been their own, too, voluntarily spent on her upkeep.