When is ‘Doing Nothing’ Okay?

The headline in the Daily Mail shouted “Girl whose texts drove her boyfriend, 18, to suicide is JAILED: Michelle Carter given 15 months after the victim's father said she 'exploited his son's weaknesses and used him as a pawn'”

I watched a video of the judge tell the girl that she was getting over two years in prison for encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself...Well, I know that's wrong but then the judge went on to say her “failure to act” is the reason she is guilty of manslaughter. Failure to act, that means to me if someone says they are going to do something bad I must act. You must act. Here in Montana, “You do what you want and I'll do what I want” seems to be motto of most of its citizens. On my show Dominick In The Morning most of my callers are always telling me that if someone wants to do something which I don't agree with, it is none of my business. That's the Montana way.

So the idea that if you want to kill yourself it's none of my business. You're free to do what you want. That's freedom?

The judge in this story is saying if you do nothing when someone is going to hurt themselves you are guilty, if you do nothing. So I guess we have freedom but not too much.

If one of my friends is going to have an abortion, and I do nothing, could my “failure to act” make me as guilty. Now his girlfriend did fail to act to stop her boyfriend from killing himself. But she did more, a lot more. She encouraged him to do it. If you knew someone was going to hurt themselves and you did nothing, no encouragement, you just did nothing, would the judge find you guilty of manslaughter?

Think about it, is letting someone hurt themselves okay. At what point are we as humans suppose to step in?

At what point would you stick your nose into someones life? If they are going to kill themselves? If you think they are killing their baby? If you think someone having a sex change operation is mutilation? If you see someone eating the wrong kind of food or becoming obese? Is it a failure to act? Where is the line?

Dominick