Assisted Suicide Should Be Legalized for those that are mentally stable and suffering

His argument is that only those who are mentally stable should have the right to decide when they die. This concept of being capable of making a decision is discriminatory against those who can’t make a decision. This discrimination against the unable is the start of ableism. Braswell[1]: "autonomy" is … saturated with ableist norms. … the rise of liberal … autonomy … was predicated on ideals of self-government that were prejudicial against the disabled … The deviant corporeality of the disabled body refused the dictates of the autonomous individual. … the… dependence of persons with disabilities on social relations … was the … opposite of the autonomous self's constitutive independence. … disability represented the destruction of the autonomy ... the rise of the autonomous subject created disability as a pathology. And, the aff mistakes the reasons people want to die and ignore the root cause of the ill person’s lack of will to live. The rhetoric of wanting to die because of illness is rooted in the ableistic mentality. Amundson and Taira[2]: the arguments made by assisted-suicide advocates … was blatantly ableist. They would describe the person’s impairments, in the most demeaning possible terms, and then ask “Wouldn’t you want to die if you were in that position?” … they took the impairments themselves as the true reasons for the death wish. … these people wanted to die because of their social situation, not because of their impairments. … a quadriplegic man … was refused the support he needed to live independently near his friends and family. Wouldn’t you want to die if you were institutionalized against your will and taken away from your family? … the assisted suicide advocates … assumed that his quadriplegia alone, not his social circumstances, caused his despair. ... his death wish would vanish if he were given the support he needed to live freely ... We have every reason to reject ableism - it leads to the discrimination and exclusion of people from moral consideration akin to racism and sexism. Siebers[3]: Oppression ... is a form of intergroup violence. ... oppression involves “groups,” and not “individuals,” means that it concerns identities, ... Oppression is justified ... by … natural inferiority ... The representation of inferiority always comes back to the appearance of the body and the way the body makes other bodies feel. ... the study of oppression requires an understanding of aesthetics—not only because oppression uses aesthetic judgments for its violence but also because the signposts of how oppression works are visible ... where aesthetic judgments about the creation and appreciation of bodies are openly discussed. ... it is not a matter of reducing other minority identities to disability identity. Rather, it is a matter of understanding the work done by disability in oppressive systems. ... the ... properties of the body are ... constructed as disqualifying defects, ... the oppressed identity is represented in some way as disabled, … Racism” disqualifies … for the inferiority of certain skin colors, … Sexism” disqualifies on the basis of sex … Ableism” disqualifies on the basis of mental and physical differences, first selecting and then stigmatizing them as disabilities. … As racism, sexism, … fall away … the prejudice against disability remains in full force, … Disability represents at this moment in time the final frontier of justifiable human inferiority. The alternative is to reject the aff to reject the ableist mentality. The K negates in a number of ways: First, it rejects the resolution normatively as a rejection of the categorization of people as “not mentally stable” and thus unable to make this decision for themselves. Second, it turns the aff. Their attempt to protect the rights of these vulnerable groups only creates the possibility of endless oppression. This means that he’s not protecting vulnerable groups like his C5 says he is, rather only hurting them further. Third, it turns the aff. His attempts to provide people with rights (i.e. C1) just leads to the discrimination and removal of rights from people we view as lesser than us (i.e. mentally unstable people). Next is theory. A - interpretation: Debaters may make any argument that defends their specific side of the resolution - it doesn’t matter what form the argument comes in so long as the argument affirms/negates. B - violation: He says I can’t run Ks specifically because it’s a K C - standards: The standard is ground skew. Saying I can’t run Ks is inherently unfair toward my position as it limits the amount ofoptions I have to respond to affirmative arguments without reciprocally limiting aff options. This makes the debate unfairly tilted in his favor as he has all possible options of arguments in front of him while I have to debate with an arm tied behind my back. Moreover, saying I can’t run Ks hurts the educational value of the debate because it limits the scope of what all we can discuss within the round. The more we’re allowed to talk about within the round, the more we can learn from the round, so saying that I can’t run a specific kind of argument means that there’s just less we could potentially learn from this debate. D - Voters: He ought to lose the debate because - Fairness is a voter because the role of the judge is decide on who did the better job debating but that’s not possible if one side has an unfair advantage. Education is also a voter because the only thing that gives debating value is what we learn from the debate. It’s the entire reason why competitive debate exists in the first place. And, vote him down for this because a) I had to spend time checking the abuse, so the round can never be evaluated fairly again, and b) to disincentivise bad debating - he’s always going to continue to do this until he gets punished for doing it. And, even if you don’t vote him down for it, you reject the rule which means that running the K is fair. And, prefer theory to the rules he outlined in his first round because: First, his rules only talk about how this single debate should work, whereas my theory shell talks about how debate as an activity should work, which is inclusive of every debate. Second, just saying that “this is the rules” only begs the question of why that rule is a rule in the first place. We wouldn’t follow rules that hurt us, so if I’m winning that his rule hurts debate as an activity there’s no reason for us to follow it. Third, I never accepted the rule in the first place. My first round was specifically saying that I agreed not to make an argument that round, not that I accepted to not run a K. There’s no reason I should be held to a rule I don’t agree with. And, don’t buy the “don’t accept the debate” response that’s going to come because this creates an awful precedent for debating because a) debating is entirely about challenging people’s mindsets and exploring different ideas and ways of approaching problems, so saying people can’t use different methods to approach a topic is entirely counter-productive to debating, b) this only encourages people to make stricter rules to narrow who can argue for what and how they can make arguments in general, which hurts creativity and only encourages people to specifically design rules and definitions around ways to make it easier for them to win (i.e. violating the rules results in him just straight winning without any discussion of the topic) and c) just saying I shouldn’t have accepted doesn’t mean that his rules aren’t abusive and harmful. If anything I’m specifically the person who should’ve accepted as I’m one of the few people on here who not only knows to call him out on this kind of behavior, but also on how to call him out. So, this makes the round super easy to evaluate. First, you’re looking to theory. His ruleset that he creates that restricts negative options is harmful to debate as an activity. You vote him down and negate the resolution because of it. But even if you’re not straight giving him the loss because of it, it means you drop the no Ks rule and evaluate the K, which is turning the aff in multiple places and negates the resolution normatively. But even if you don’t buy literally any of that, on-case responses. Start on his libertarian framework argument. First, this is one of the links to ableism. His rhetoric of people wanting to die from the extreme suffering they’re undergoing is exactly what Amundson and Taira are talking about. Second, turn this against him. Legalizing assisted suicide permanently embeds the state in decisions about death. Now instead of the state denying people the right to die when they want to, people who are suffering have to grovel before the feet of the state and beg for their permittance to let doctors give them medication to kill themselves with. This permanently embeds the state in things, not removes it. Third, there’s no solvency here. If we’re denying assisted suicide from people who aren’t mentally stable, then no one who actually wants to kill themselves will be allowed access to it since suicidal thoughts and tendencies are commonly associated as a warning sign for mental illness[4]. This means that it’s literally impossible for the aff to grant anyone rights under the resolution. Then, on the Hippocratic Oath/Religious Concerns/Living Wills First, there’s literally no relevance to this argument. I couldn’t care less about these arguments and there’s nothing making me care. Second, there’s no impact to this argument. Even if he’s winning 100% of this debate, there’s no reason why this actually means you vote aff. Then, on Social Groups. First, ableism turns this against him. Instead of protecting minorities, he’s denying their rights and opening the door for perpetual and eternal discrimination. Second, there’s no actual warrant to his argument. His stats don’t actually show how assisted suicide isn’t abusing minorities.