OK. I’m probably going to upset a fair number of regular readers by taking a counter-intuitive position. Many of those who would agree with me on the EU, or on climate change, or that “the facts of life are conservative”, may also tend to take a traditional view on a wide range of ethical issues. This is true to some extent in the UK. More so in the US. I may agree with the Tea Party on small government and low taxes, but I don’t necessarily agree with them on abortion or assisted suicide. I’m more likely to go with Ron Paul than Rick Santorum. (Ron Paul appears to have voted against a ban on physician-assisted suicide in 1999, although I’m not too clear on his position since then).
We’ve just had the report from Lord Falconer’s pretentiously-titled “Commission on Assisted Dying”, which despite its neutral name seems to have been driven and funded by pro-euthanasia interests. We’ve also had a predictable response from the medical and political establishments, from the commentariat and the bien pensants. I’ll quote just one example, but it’s fairly typical. Sheila Hollins, past president of the Royal College of Physicians and president-elect of the BMA, writes didactically “Sick people need help to live, not help to die”.
The tone of much of the criticism reflects this extremely patronising Hollins piece. The unquestioned assumption is that we — the medical profession, the politicians — should decide what your rights are, and when and how you should exercise them. For heaven’s sake, what about the patient’s opinion?
I’d start from a more libertarian position. If we don’t have rights with respect to our own lives, do we have any rights at all? We have various portentous declarations of human rights that always talk about “The Right to Life”, but unless that includes the right not to live, then it’s not a Right to Life at all — it’s an onerous duty to go on living, whether we like it or not.
I have great respect for all those who have profound moral scruples about suicide, or abortion, or divorce, or blood transfusions. And these people clearly have a right to refuse assisted dying, or abortion, or divorce (subject to the law and the spouse’s view), or blood transfusions. What they do not have, in my book, is the right to impose their moral own scruples on the rest of society, which may not agree with them.
Politicians who pontificate about the life and death of their constituents are on very dodgy ground indeed, but I am, I suppose, entitled to discuss my own life and death. I have already made out a “living will”, asking my family and carers to respect my wish not to be kept alive by heroic medical interventions when recovery is beyond hope. As the old rhyming couplet has it, “Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive/Officiously to keep alive”.
But I feel that this living will, and the proposals of the “Commission on Assisted Dying”, do not go far enough. The report specifically requires the informed consent of the patient. Yet this denies the right to die to those increasing numbers of elderly people whose conscious, meaningful life has been terminated already by dementia. As we conquer many of the diseases of early and middle life, and as we extend life expectancy, so the numbers of elderly suffering from severe dementia will, sadly, increase.
I should like to be able to make a more comprehensive living will, so that if in the future I were to suffer seriously from dementia, if I were unable to remember who I was, or to recognise my family, if I were unable to confirm my wishes in the matter, I could nevertheless be allowed to pass away in short order, and not be kept a half-alive, vegetative shell of what used to be a man, for months or years.
It is especially sensitive to raise the issue of cost in this context, but again I claim the right to do so at least for myself. I should hate to think that tens of thousands of pounds a year (whether from my estate or from the taxpayer) should be spent to keep me in limbo and vacancy. I would rather leave my estate to my family, and allow scarce medical facilities to be used for someone else with some hope of recovery.
I am unimpressed by those who argue that a right to assisted suicide would lead to old people coming under pressure from their families to die. I suspect most are more likely to come under pressure not to do so. In any case, most human activities involve some degree of risk, and require appropriate safeguards. We should manage the activity and the safeguards, not turn our backs on an important question for fear of misuse. And we should think of the rights and freedoms of all those who are terminally ill, or foreseeing dementia, who may desperately want to have the consolation of a dignified way out.
As Shakespeare said of King Lear: “Oh let him pass! He hates him much that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer”. Or as Simeon says in the New Testament (Luke 2:29): “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace”.
By Roger Helmer MEP
2 Responses to Assisted Dying: Dangerous Territory
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There are three entirely different matters under discussion that are being con-fused.
0. Suicide — death by one’s own hand alone
1. (Physician) Assisted Suicide — death by one’s wishes but not by one’s hand
2. Euthenasia — death neither by one’s wishes nor by one’s hand, but for compassionate reasons
I remember being amused, the first time I read that suicide used to carry the death penalty. It was only recently someone explained the reasoning to me: by executing those who are unsuccessful in attempting to take their own life, the use of suicide as emotional blackmail or to win attention and pity is discouraged, only those who sincerely wish to no longer live commit suicide.
I happen to disagree with this reasoning, but I hope it serves to illustrate that even the right to take one’s own life might plausibly have caveats.
All the points Roger raises above are excellent, and convincing arguments for suicide to be legal. He fails, however, to construct a meaningful case that it should be legal under any circumstances to take the life of a fellow human. Indeed, he fails to construct a meaningful case that it should be legal to assist someone in carrying out their own suicidal wishes.
It is facile to construct a scenario in which it is morally justifiable to take the life of another human for compassionate reasons. However: not every moral act need be legal (just as many legal acts — like lying and adultery — are immoral).
The line in the sand is the consent of the one who is to die (and even that line has proven… fuzzy… in the Netherlands). Once we allow friends and family of the person to decide on their behalf that they should die, it is a small step then to allow a doctor to make that decision, and then a bureaucrat.
“Oh no, not the ‘slippery slope’ argument!”
The slippery slope is real. Whether or not one thinks that abortion-on-demand should be legal, one must concede that it effectively is, and yet the major law on the matter was passed with the explicit caveat that it should not be.
“What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? … And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
The suffering of those with dementia is not the Devil. It does not even slip into the bottom of the league of injustices currently suffered in the world. Crime rates are 40 times higher than they were when Robert Bolt penned those words. That’s 4000%. Society’s poorest languish under burdensome regulations and onerous taxes levied by the very body which employs Mr Helmer. He speaks of the State, infringing one’s natural Right to Die. Yet there are vast swathes of our inner cities through which one cannot stroll at night, for fear of footpads and brigands violating one’s natural Right Not To Be Mugged.
Yet to fix this minor matter, this trifling issue of whether Christ’s humanity and divinity are united or separable, Mr Helmer suggests tearing up 800 years of Common Law.
This cannot end well.
My God! Shall we concentrate on reducing the size of the State or must we enact even more laws enabling the Government to eliminate us through “Assisted Dying” when they determine that we are no longer curable? No mention of the millions of British subjects who profess a religion and who may see death in a different light.
I tend to agree with Hollins that the one purpose of physicians should be to cure illnesses and help people stay alive. Patronizing? A distinct kind of professional could be employed in “Assisted Dying” if we reach that point.
Committing suicide is an option in a free society and failed attempts to do so are rarely punished with the death penalty. Those in their right mind are aware of this. Dementia cases would be an exception but do they justify legislation for all of us?
While still members of the EU why not consult Brussels for their views on this delicate topic? Or do we struggle for separation from Europe and end up dying in British fashion?