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Maybe it's just me but I wouldn't want organs from a child rapist and/or murderer. I know logically it makes no sense to feel like that but I just couldn't do it.
And no I don't think the government should harvest organs from anybody without their permission.
No cruel nor unusual punishments. That includes harvesting organs.
Hell, there was even a case that Walmart lost where they weren't allowed to ask employees to work overtime (in the case of not affecting their employment standing). Not even if they add "you're free to say no", because just asking already crosses some line.
I went round and round for 20-something pages on these arguments a couple weeks ago. The thread is still in the first couple pages here, and it is entitled "Organ Donation Should be Compulsory." I don't have much desire to do it again because I have responded to all of these same arguments over and over. In a nutshell, there are three relevant points:
1. There is a difference between having a legal right to something and having a basic human right to something. I am not making a legal claim. I am making a moral claim, which is a claim about basic human rights. Pointing to legal findings is irrelevant.
2. Would you agree that society has the right to bury or dispose of your body in some way after you die? If so, then you surely you recognize that such burial will certainly cause your organs to decay and your body to waste away. I fail to see the morally significant difference between that and removing your organs for a useful purpose.
3. Your dead body is not you. I fully believe you have rights. I do not believe a dead body has rights. Our rights stem from our capacity to have interests. There are ways your life can go well or go poorly because you can have positive and negative experiences. That is the foundation of all of your rights. If you can't have experiences and will never be able to have them, you have no rights. You can't experience pleasure or suffering, and you have no interests. Dead bodies can't have experiences, and they have no interests.
As others have pointed out, and firmly placing myself in the camp of not ascribing to a system of stone age superstition, this flies in the face of religious beliefs and the right to hold them, regardless of how ridiculous they are. Catholics (and many other xtians) proscribed cremation because they believe if you don't have an intact body you will miss out when the last trump is sounded - eg when the Last Days come you won't be bodily taken up into heaven. Amongst a whole plethora of ridiculous beliefs, this has always struck me as particularly ridiculous. So if you die in a fire and your body cannot be recovered, no Resurrection for you! Or if you were injured in life and lost a limb or were blinded, when you are resurrected, it will be sans the limb and still blind.
Catholics are now allowed to be cremated but the ashes are MANDATORILY to be buried in "holy ground". You can't scatter them. I hate to think what happened to all the bodies that were long long past recovery when a church was razed and the graves had to be moved for construction of a highway or what have you. I mean, they're gone within a few years. I'm sorry but if God can do ANYTHING it won't matter where your arm was disposed of or how thoroughly your body rotted into the ground - or, for that matter, whether or not you were cremated and the ashes scattered.
BUT. That is their belief and refusing to allow them to act on it as relates to the dead bodies of their fellows while still supposedly allowing them to hold and teach that belief is just ... well, cruel for one thing. And a violation of the right to believe as you choose without government interference (as long as that belief harms no one, so starting up the Aztec First United Church and then slaughtering your neighbors on the smoking altars of your church would not be allowed).
The vast majority of dead people have living relatives who care what happens to the body because of deeply held religious beliefs. No matter how ridiculous those beliefs, they still have rights as pertains to the disposition of said body.
1) If you allow or force people on death row to donate their organs, you may create a perverse incentive for the State to increase the number of people on death row to increase the supply of organs. This could also potentially impact minorities unevenly - the increase in convictions could be higher among minority groups or the poor.
That is already EXACTLY the situation. Going for the organs would make it worse though. Now there's an incentive to hurry the process along and kill more people - which will disproportionately fall on the poor and minorities, whether they were actually guilty or not. Which is (again) already the case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tarheel_indc
2) Even if you are able to put (1) aside and say "we'll just give people on death row the option to donate their organs", the problem is that these convicts are not in a position to make a free decision. The potential for coercion is obvious: the convict could be offered better treatment if he/she cooperates and worse treatment otherwise, and that prevents him/her from choosing freely.
My worry is that so many prisons are already privatized. I guarandogtee you that at least privatized prisons will find SOME WAY to profit from the organs of its victims. Hence giving them even MORE incentive to turn into organleggers.
Good point. Imagine if people took the "implied permission unless one opts out" approach for consent to sexual activity.
The other points he raised were valid, especially the lifestyle point. Forget what the act of execution using the methods in use today does to an organ's viability. Even before that point there may be a history of drug use or STDs that would render organ ineligible for donation.
I also like the points some have made about the justice system becoming a revenge system. I believe that sometimes "justice" means executing one for his crimes. I am perfectly comfortable with the idea of punishing capital crimes with death. But as long as we claim to be a just society, we cannot let the requirement for punishment bleed to the point of vengeance.
A death sentence is ALREADY a revenge move. It does not deter. It keeps no one "safer" than just keeping the guy locked up. I'm not sure, given the current impediments to actually imposing a death sentence, that its even cheaper to kill a prisoner than to just keep him locked up forever.
You can "believe" in the death penalty all you want. But let's call a spade a spade: state-sanctioned murder of a prisoner is solely for revenge. It doesn't do anything else for anyone.
You can "believe" in the death penalty all you want. But let's call a spade a spade: state-sanctioned murder of a prisoner is solely for revenge. It doesn't do anything else for anyone.
The death penalty could be a process to quench public outcry for punishment, as a way to gain higher approval for law enforcement.
I don't think that harvesting organs is so much a case of retribution and revenge as it is about justice. I know that I am in the minority on this, but I think it is only fair that someone pays for taking a life by saving a life, if possible. I also think that it is horrible that some people are allowed to live on and on and on with all his needs taken care of after he committed one or more absolutely horrific murders -- and if those murders were against children, that just makes it that much worse.
(Again, I know that I am in the minority about this issue.)
I saw a 'Forensic Files' show the other night and the true story was about this guy that raped and killed an 8 year old girl. That's the lowest of the low. The creepiest of the creeps. So my question is should that creeps organs be harvested to give people transplants that they need to survive? Would it be justice to give his organs to a child in need to survive for what he did? The feeling inside me says yes but I realize it is a huge legal entanglement
I do not have any sympathy for such deviant behavior but I don't agree with inhumane revenge.
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