Thread by @soychicka

Somebody should ask Ms. Coney Barrett:

If the right to life extends from fertilization to 'natural' death...

is a preventable death from COVID19 considered to be a "natural" death?

given distribution of PPE + resources was based on political considerations, not need...

there is clearly human intervention assisting the survival of some over the survival of others, solely based upon the political leanings of neighbors in the state in which they reside.

For comparison's sake, let's say there are 25 premature infants born in one day in a single, isolated, rural hospital with only 5 NICU beds, and 11 more beds without the full complement of equipment that MIGHT be used successfully for those closer to term.

All mothers arrive in labor @ the same time.

If beds are assigned based on birth order + proximity to term and the infants born later in the day were unable to survive, that would be 'natural death' based on the stochastic nature of the universe and timing.

But if beds are NOT assigned sequentially, based instead on other criteria - an assumed probability of survival - that act of HUMAN judgement choosing one's death over another's right to live brings into question the 'naturalness' of death.

If we learn that human judgement is predicated on discrimination that would be an explicit violation of constitutional rights - i.e., the infants who get the beds are the ones whose parents can afford to pay their hospital bills over those on medicaid

Or imagine if all 15 black infants are denied NICU beds, 11/15 denied a bed at all if, but ALL the white infants get a bed (all 5 NICU beds and 7 of 11 secondary beds)

That could be an explicit or an implicit violation - explicit discrimination is clear;

and implicit discrimination can come in the form of reliance on statistics or AI that leverages statistics that assume a lower probability of survival in all black infants, not just based on skin color or "race", but zip code, parental income, the car the parents drive, etc...

Human judgement comes into play when choosing to accept the results of any tools that allocate distribution of life-saving resources, and those who choose to use any tools that may make assumptions

If this choice is

If any human takes it upon themselves to make the choice if you, in isolation, live or die, ill or not, that is considered a unnatural death.

That's murder/manslaughter/etc.

When selecting who lives and dies from amongst a group of ill patients, if done fairly & equitably, selection based on the stochasticity of disease severity reflects the stochasticity of the universe...

so it's fair to consider that a natural process.

BUT, when someone chooses to intervene and prevent some deaths but not others, based on that individual's assumptions and preconceptions about the value of a patient's life -

if there are any biases based on the rights we hold to be self-evident, you lose stochasticity,

and without stochasticity, the progression of illness to death ceases to be a natural process, rather a human-curated and human-directed process.

And that, to me, may be a death from a natural response to a proximal stimulus - but it not a 'natural death.'

So. If choices of someone within the GOVERNMENT leveraging a bias against those who happen to live in states that favor a given political party, that violates one's right to peaceably assemble AND penalizes all citizens of the state for the exercise of freedom of speech of SOME.

And if those choices by government actors lead to the death of citizens who otherwise would have lived?

That's an unnatural death.

So, how does Ms. Coney Barrett feel about that?

Or is that a hypothetical - or just too close to being in the pipeline for her to address?

There's an unfinished thought in there somewhere, I think, but Im'a hit send anyway and eat my dinner.

And, BTW, in case it's not otherwise clear - I think all of the above are wrong.