To the Editor:
In his July 15 column, “Death and Budgets,” David Brooks assures us that “we are never coercively going to give up on the old and ailing,” but then argues that “it is hard to see us reducing health care inflation seriously unless people and their families are willing to . . . confront death and their obligations to the living.” Coercion comes in many forms. Creating an atmosphere in which the “old and ailing” are persuaded that their “obligations to the living” require them to hasten their own ends to avoid becoming a burden to their families and to society at large may not be the ugliest imaginable form of coercion, but coercion it surely is.
The best argument against what proponents of physician-assisted suicide call the “right to die” is the ease with which the right to die can be transmuted into the duty to die.
DOUGLAS ARONIN
Forest Hills, Queens, July 17, 2011
Note from KBJ: The letter writer confuses coercion with manipulation. To coerce is to threaten with harm, as when a robber puts a gun to your head and says, "Your money or your life." Nobody is being threatened with harm by being encouraged or pressured to die.
