Rights after death versus rights to live

There has been wide coverage of the Prime Minister’s recommendation of presumed consent for organ donors.

I will side-step the question of whether such ‘consent’ is genuine or not because a different question bothers me.

I am amazed by the number of people who are prepared to stand up for the right for people’s wishes to be upheld after they are dead when contrasted with how few people seem to be bothered with the right’s of human beings while they are still alive.

Apparently in the UK over 1,000 people a year die for lack of organ donation. Compare this with (in 2006) almost 200,000 lives terminated via abortion.

And this latter number is only likely to rise. Thus only a month ago there was discussion about the possibility of GP surgery abortions.

The irony seems to lie in the fact that although people will always debate about when life starts, there seems to be much greater unanimity about when it ends. And when your life has ended, it seems fairly clear that you have no use for your organs. Unlike the person who is still alive…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *