IanVisits said
Posted by Eric MacDonald
In response to a blog post on the Commission on Assisted Dying’s report, which is expected to be made public on Thursday, from the blog Cranmer (“Examining Religio-Political Agendas with Politco-Religious Objectives”),
IanVisits said…
The problem is that such a Bill would implicitly determine that some lives are simply not worth living: some existences are ‘second class’.
As someone who is likely to face a rather protracted illness and lingering death (unless I am hit by a car), I can assure you that some lives are indeed inferior to others.
Being stuck in bed with needles stuck in you and nurses constantly checking that you are still clinging onto life is unquestionably inferior to going out for a nice walk and doing what I want when I want.
I have already taken the decision that – funding permitted – I will take the option to end my life when it becomes unbearable.
At the moment, I have a choice, I can leave while still fit enough to get to Switzerland, or I can hang around a bit longer, but with ever increasing risks that I will wake up one day and be too ill to make the trip.
If I am stuck in the UK, the State will then force me to linger on in ever increasing levels of discomfort and decreasing levels of dignity until medical science eventually fails to hold my shattered carcass together and I finally die.
I don’t want to die. I want to live as long as I can do so in moderate dignity.
The current system actually kills me sooner than necessary – simply because I have to die at a time when I am still fit and modestly healthy to take a trip to Switzerland.
Changing the law will let some of us wait a bit longer – maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months – before taking the final option.
Yes, some people will be pressured into death, but that already happens and there are a lot of people who “die in their sleep”, who most certainly were assisted to do so. The law on murder covers those cases, so there is no need to worry that assisted suicide would change that.
Letting people choose when to die will mean more people living for longer, and when they die, they can do so at home, surrounded by comforts and not in an impersonal Swiss industrial estate.
Why is that a bad thing?
I echo the question: Why is that a bad thing? Christians, like the man who styles himself “Archbishop Cranmer”, think that there are all sorts of dangers involved in the legalisation of assisted dying. In his post he says this:
Presently, only about 20-25 people jet out to Switzerland each year to end their lives. It is estimated that the legalisation of ‘assisted suicide’ and euthanasia would lead to 13000 deaths annually. The most vulnerable elderly and disabled would inevitably feel they were a burden on their families and society, and the terminally ill may view the option as preferable to months or years of treatment and palliative care. God alone knows how many teenagers might choose to end their lives over depression, family breakdown or unrequited love.
This just shows how the religious are reduced to empty fear-mongering over the issue of assisted dying. Sure, people can be put under pressure to die, but whether they have decided or not would be subject to review, and would have to be vetted by someone who could discern whether or not their decision was freely made. As to estimates of numbers, there is very little ground for making prognostications. The numbers in the Netherlands are only a very small fraction of deaths every year, and it is likely that this will be true of England and Wales as well. As to being a burden on their families, as Mary Warnock has repeatedly said, there is no reason why a person who feels a burden should not be able, for altruistic reasons, to decide to die, especially if other aspects of their situation seemed to make life no longer worthwhile for them. Besides, does it not happen now? Are persons never pressured into forgoing treatment or having treatment withdrawn? As for teenagers, any law legalising assisted dying would not include anyone with transient episodes of depression, as is the case in most instances of teenage suicide. People really must make some effort to be reasonable, as the person calling himself (rather pompously) ”Archbishop Cranmer” stoutly refuses to do.
Posted on 4 January 2012, in Assisted Dying, Assisted Suicide, Dignitas, Euthanasia. Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.
There is more to be gained from carrying one’s cross than than avoiding it, though the desire is innate. But the passion of Christ is the fundamental paradigm for life: suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Ah yes. Shut up and suffer, because Jesus.
I know Stephen Weinberg has a famous quote that I always liked, but am starting to doubt: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
Where are the good religious people? Are they all Unitarians?
I wonder why Cranmer needs to speculate about the potential negative side-effects of legalizing assisted dying, when he points out himself that this is legal in the country I live in – Switzerland. I have read nothing here to suggest that old people are emotionally forced into ending their lives early and I certainly know that there are not scores of Swiss teenagers being euthanized each year. Childish fear-mongering reveals itself when people have no decent arguments to make.
But it wouldn’t be 13000 *more* deaths annually, would it? He makes it sound something like “raising the speed limit would lead to 13000 deaths annually”, but that is an incremental change. The deaths in this case are going to happen anyway. In fact, he is saying that 13000 people would take advantage of this law annually. That is the reason to enact the law, not a reason not to.
I think, in all fairness, Silver (#1), that there are religious people who do good things, and they’re not all Unitarians. So far as assistance in dying goes, most people do not accept the judgement of their leaders. This is evident in many of the polls that are done on the matter. In one poll, communicant members of the Church of England, for example, voted 61% in favour of the legalisation of assisted dying, and this has been repeated for Roman Catholics in various places.
Adrian (#2). Yes, this is something that I have pointed out very often. It really is ridiculous for people to continue to use the scare technique, when we have Switzerland as an example of a country which has had assisted suicide legislation for 70 years. It is foolish of people to go on like “Cranmer,” when all he has to do is look at Switzerland, and find out that the effect is not at all what he is predicting.
Brian (#3). Precisely. I don’t think — given the experience in Switzerland, in Oregon, or in the Netherlands — that there will be that many; but, as you say, if there are that many, then that is, indeed, a reason to enact the legislation. It is foolish to suggest that that many people would take advantage of it, and then say, because of that, that therefore we should not pass the law. What he’s trying to say, of course, is that most of those people would not actually make that choice, but have it made for them. There is absolutely no evidence that this would be the effect of such legislation.
It strikes me that the specter of an elderly or infirm person choosing to die to avoid “being a burden” is of concern not so much for those who might be faced with that choice, but for those left behind who would be consumed by guilt that they were perceived as being burdened. But I can certainly see even someone who has the best of loving care saying something like, “I know my family is doing their best for me, but it is taking so much out of them, and I’m not enjoying my life anyway, so why can’t I just go?” (But of course Margaret Somerville and her ilk would invoke the idea of “redemptive suffering”, and say that the dying person is bound to stay to the “natural end” (whatever that means, these days), and that the family members’ trials and tribulations will, of course, strengthen them and bring them closer to Jeeeeesus.
Has any assisted dying legislation not explicitly required the complete consent of the dying? Oh horror, people may actually be able to decide if their own lives are still worth living!
If my life is not mine to end when I see fit, whose is it? Clearly we need to be careful that such decisions are well informed and made of sound mind, but such a choice must always be personal above everything else. Anything else is horrifying tyranny.
How does taking away the option to do something about being a burden, remove the feeling of being a burden? Wouldn’t that just make someone feel like a burden – who is helpless to do anything about it?