These developments have created choices not only about whether to live or die but also about when and how to die. Birth and death are unique phenomena. The state and the medical profession no longer interfere with birth control. They ought to stop interfering with death control. Practicing birth control and practicing death control as well as abstaining from these practices have far-reaching consequences, for both the individual and others.
Birth control is important for the young, death control, for the old.
The young are often entrapped by abstaining from birth control, the old, by abstaining from death control. As individuals, we can choose to die actively or passively, practicing death control or dying of disease or old age. As a society, we can choose to let people die on their own terms or force them to die on terms decreed by the dominant ethic. It would be more accurate to say that suicide is our foremost moral and political problem, logically anterior to such closely related problems as the right to reject treatment or the right to physician-assisted suicide. Over time, social attitudes toward many behaviors have changed.