Over at the Huffington Post there is a debate between Margaret Somerville, purported ethicist from McGill University in Montreal, and Wanda Morris, Executive Director of Dying with Dignity (Canada), the voice for choice at the end of life in Canada. Somerville, as is her wont, brings out all the usual suspects, none of which are really compelling, and all of which depend on two things, making you afraid of it, and claiming that it’s simply — it’s really that simple folks! — wrong to kill people. She forgets, of course, that people have been killing other people since the dawn of time, and will go on doing it. Certainly, many acts of killing are wrong and to be regretted and condemned, but merely saying that something is a matter of killing another human being is not enough all on its own to make it wrong.
Margaret’s biggest argument — the real big argument so far as Somerville is concerned — is that permitting the act of assisting someone in great suffering to die (she doesn’t like that euphemism, so we’ll come back to it) is changing something fundamental about the way in which we regard human life, and it will bring about untold changes in our society, and may — in fact she is sure that it will — change the way we regard killing others, so that legalising it in the case of those who choose to die in order to end their suffering will set society off on a slippery slope to disaster and depravity. She’s said this numerous times before, and she puts so much weight on it that it really constitutes her main argument against assisted dying (a ”sanitised” form of language that she deplores, but we will come back to that). Margaret’s problem, not to put too fine a point on it, is that she is left asking a vague question about the future: “What long term effects might result from that?” She doesn’t know, but she has this in common with the pope: she believes firmly that this will usher in a “culture of death,” if it hasn’t already arrived, and that there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth because we didn’t listen to Jeremiahs like her.
Speaking of Jeremiah, Margaret Somerville’s special métier is the jeremiad, a mournful litany of everything that will go wrong if we go down the path that, in Somerville’s fevered imagination, is bound to lead us to the worst of all possible worlds. She brings up the old canard that if assisted dying is legalised vulnerable people, the elderly and the disabled, will be placed at risk, but not only is this not true, the legalisation of assisted dying would provide, even for people she considers vulnerable, a way to escape from a burden of suffering that even the so-called “vulnerable” may at some point feel is too great for them to bear. Vulnerable people would not be put at risk by legalised assisted dying, but it would open doors to them that are now closed. Would some vulnerable people be under pressure from uncaring family members to “do the right thing” and go? Possibly. But this goes for any number of situations, when we are under pressure to do things we do not want to do. Is Margaret Somerville saying that, by definition, people with disabilities, people with chronic medical or psychological problems, the old and the infirm, are children, and unable to stand up under pressure? Or that we have no way of distinguishing between someone who is being pressured to do something, and someone who is acting freely? Surely not. Some of the most forthright people I have known spend most of their time in wheelchairs. Being disabled very often makes people more able to deal with the slings and arrows of impatient sons and daughters, not less. Having a disability tends to make people fiercely independent. All Somerville is doing is using a supposedly “deprived” class of human beings to frighten us into acquiescence to a position which, for all her words, is lacking both depth and logic.
Let’s return to what Somerville calls the sanitised language of ‘assisted dying’ and its cognates. Margaret thinks that they take away the sting of the words ‘kill’ and ‘murder.’ Well, and so they do. But, of course, we have always made moral distinctions between acts, which may have salient characteristics in common, by separating them into separate moral categories, distinguishing acts which are morally licit from those which are not. Killing in war, for example, is not normally called murder. Even in self-defence a citizen has some latitude in the amount of force that may be used to protect life and property. But Margaret should be familiar with this, for she has Thomas Aquinas to guide her, and Aquinas claimed that if a legitimate act — say, self-defence — results in the death of a person whose actions threaten life and limb, this may be considered to be a secondary, and morally legitimate side-effect of an act which, in normal circumstances, would be considered murder. It’s the context in which the act is carried out that makes the difference. Somerville thinks that making distinctions like this leads to moral relativism, but there is no basis for this accusation, so often used by people like the pope to discredit contemporary morality. And that’s why supporters of assisted dying don’t use words which make it seem as though something shameful and illegal is taking place, which it’s not — or at least won’t be, once assisted dying is legalised. Whether legalised or not, it’s not shameful. What is shameful is refusing the right of people to take their dying, just as they have taken other aspects of their lives, into their own hands.
You can tell that Margaret is out of her depth when she starts saying things like this:
Pro euthanasia advocates argue that currently accepted end of life treatment decisions, such as refusals of life support treatment, result in shortening the patient’s life, but are ethical and legal, and euthanasia is no different from them and that it’s just another form of medical treatment. Therefore, to act consistently, euthanasia should be seen as ethical and legal.
And then she says, predictably:
They also argue the right to refuse treatment establishes a right to die. But that is wrong. Rights to refuse treatment are founded in respect for the right to inviolability, the right not to be touched, including by medical treatment, without one’s informed consent. They do not recognize a right to die, let alone a right to be killed. At the very most, they establish a right to be allowed to die naturally.
There is so much wrong with this that it’s hard to sort out, not only what she’s trying to say, but why she says it, and what she thinks it means. Let’s be patient with her. She has trouble getting her ideas across, because they go clean contrary to what reasonable people nowadays tend to think. As she has come to realise in trying to get her points across to law students, her prejudices don’t wear very well in plain English. At a conference of Catholic priests, or in an audience with the pope, she would no doubt feel right at home, but most of us can see through the smoke screen that she so carefully lays down.
The problem is that, for all her bluster, there are certainly common features between a patient’s refusing treatment, or having it withdrawn, so that they can die, on the one hand, and apparently more positive acts whereby the patient is helped to die, on the other — whether this is done by being provided with a drug which will enable them to slip gently out of life by their own hand, or by receiving an injection by a doctor or nurse which, as the saying goes, helps to “put them out of their misery.” Somerville wants us to believe that these things are very different and should not be unceremoniously shoved together. Withdrawing life-sustaining treatment and providing assistance in suicide are different, aren’t they? Well, not really. Turning off a respirator, stopping nutrition and hydration, not performing life-saving surgery, putting someone into a medically induced coma until they die “naturally,” as the euphemism has it: all these things are as positive as acts of assisting someone, at their own request, to die; and pretending that they are not is just as euphemistic as the supposedly sanitised language used by supporters of assisted dying.
If Margaret Somerville really is a bioethicist, she will have familiarity with these arguments, and won’t need to be told by me. But if she knows them, then she has a duty to inform us why they do not work for her. Instead, she falls back on what is basically religious dogma, that life is invi0lable from conception to natural death. She uses the latter term a number of times as though it were a talisman. But natural death is something that human beings, as a rule, do not have. They are surrounded by medicines, life support machinery, saline and antibiotic drips, and all the other paraphernalia of modern medicine. Not a natural death in sight. And in this situation, withdrawing treatment is just as positive an act as providing the means whereby someone may end their life, and it is simple prevarication to suggest otherwise. She makes the argument that
in respecting refusals of treatment the physician does not have a primary intention to kill the patient as is true in euthanasia
Notice the word ‘primary’ here. This is the so-called doctrine of double effect. If an act can be interpreted in two ways, as in the case of withdrawing treatment, the doctor is free to interpret this in terms of the requirements of the law, protecting the patient’s right not to be touched or treated against their will. So the doctor’s primary intention is to fulfil this obligation, not to kill the patient. This keeps everything morally neat and tidy, but this only holds where there is a clear distinction between the act of withdrawing treatment and the cause of death. This is generally not the case, as, for example, when a patient is being kept alive on a ventilator. The point still is that it is an act (or an act of omission) that brings about the death of the patient, and Somerville can’t hide behind double effect in this convenient way, as though the fact that an act can be interpreted in different ways means that we have radically different acts. It doesn’t work this way, and Aquinas himself was fully aware of this. In any event, what is really at issue is the patient’s quality of life. The patient makes a decision regarding quality of life, and then has those responsible for her care to make sure that she dies. The doctor may not “intend” this as a “primary” intention, but is still responsible for the outcome. This is very clear in the case where withdrawing the treatment doesn’t lead quickly to the death the patient thought would come soon. It just won’t do to pretend that the doctor bears no responsibility for hastening death in such a case, or for whatever outcome ensues upon his or her decision. A good book for Somerville to read here would be Helga Kuhse’s The Sanctity of Life Doctrine in Medicine: A Critique.
Somerville’s most scathing remarks she saves for individualism and autonomy, though she doesn’t really call it that. It’s worth quoting her at length:
Unbridled “radical autonomy” is the cornerstone for many of the so-called “progressive values” stances, including euthanasia.
But can dying people really can make free and informed (autonomous) decisions that they want “assistance to die” — which is not the same as “wanting to die,” which many terminally ill people do want. New concepts such as “relational autonomy” — the idea that a person is not an isolated being, but exists in a context that influences their decisions, and that this must be taken into account when judging the validity of those decisions — can restrain individual autonomy gone wild.
Note first the loaded language: “unbridled ‘radical autonomy’,” “individual autonomy gone wild.” There is no basis for supposing that autonomy has gone wild or that what people are asking for is unbridled radical autonomy (whatever that means), though one might wonder whether the ordinary person would consent to be “bridled,” and why Somerville thinks that they ought to be. Somerville talks as if we were horses in need of restraint. But who is going to do the restraining? Somerville? The pope? The cardinals, priests, bishops, papal nuncios, MPs or Prime Ministers, or other authorities? And by what right do they assert their authority over the individual who is suffering intolerably?
The new concept of “relational autonomy” is just the old authoritarianism writ small. No, we are not isolated beings. And that is precisely why assisted dying should be available, so that suffering people do not have to crawl away by themselves and die in some desperate attempt to rid themselves of their lives when they have become a burden. We expect that the family and the society will rally around the suffering person, to help relieve their suffering where this is possible, but to help them die when, in the opinion of the person who suffers, it is the right time to die. Somerville is right in one thing. Even people who ask for assistance in dying don’t want to die. Of course not. My wife Elizabeth did not want to die. She loved life, and was full of life to the end. But she judged that dying was the only way to escape the pain and the indignity imposed by her MS, a condition that would only worsen until she was trapped inescapably in her body. And when someone comes to the point of making that judgement — and why can they not, despite Somerville’s paltry efforts at making such autonomous decision making deeply questionable? — they should have the assistance of society to bring their lives gently to an end, with their families around them, as they make the last journey in their loving company. Instead, Elizabeth died before she otherwise would have done, because once trapped, Canadian law would have provided no other alternative than either a long-drawn out life of paralysis or starving to death, and she was unwilling to be trapped in her body. How many years did she lose, because of people like Margaret Somerville? I don’t know, but they were not few.
I find Margaret Somerville so offensive that sometimes I find it hard to write without animus about her. She is shoring up the ruins of an old authoritarianism, when society made crucial decisions for citizens, who were thought incapable of making these choices on their own. But that day is waning fast, and Margaret keeps finding different half plausible accounts that make it seem more humane and life-affirming, but what she is really celebrating is death in all its misery. Dying is a miserable thing to do. Very few people die with dignity; some die in great misery and intolerable pain, simply because of the nature of their diseases. Does society have a right to force people to die in the way that is prescribed by the particular illnesses which afflict them? I say not. Margaret thinks she has the right to determine how others will die; but I will say now, what I have said before, that for that period of life in which I, or any other person, is being forced to suffer against their will, they are no more than slaves of a system that holds their lives hostage until the magic of a suppositious “natural death” has borne them away. By what right do societies enslave their suffering members in this way?
Margaret Somerville is Canada’s most unqualified ethicist, and because she is almost unstoppable once she begins to talk, she is the darling of the CBC, who like to fill the unforgiving minute with 60 or more words rattled off at top speed from someone who claims to be qualified to speak on moral issues. She’s no more qualified than the pope, and he is hopelessly outclassed by experts in bioethics. She keeps repeating the same old mantra, looking for clouds where there are silver linings, supposing that the people of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Oregon, and elsewhere, are being carried off by careless and thoughtless health professionals. She brings up the case of the deaf twins in Belgium who were recently helped to die — “euthanized” as Somerville puts it — because they were going blind. But there was much else that was wrong, as John Walker, over at The Limping Chicken (independent deaf news for the UK), tells us in some detail (thanks to Wanda Morris for the link). Margaret hears what she wants to hear. She has no compassion for the suffering. Her dogma is always more important than the suffering of those who are the victims of her crusade against assisted dying. Suffering people who seek help in dying are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, but Somerville has no heart for them, only for those who are in no danger, but who, in Margaret’s addled religious mind, are thought to lie at the top of a slippery slope which, once set in motion, will lead us inevitably to perdition. She is not an ethicist at all. She’s a religious busy-body who can’t shut up, because her religious beliefs insist on intruding themselves in others’ lives. They have no place there. Put a sock in it, Margaret!
By the way, Wanda Morris does a great job defending assisted dying. Go read the debate and vote. So far the religious Margaret has changed more minds. I can scarcely hope to “Pharyngulate” an online poll, but spread it around. Take the woman and her empty arguments down!
Excellent post, Eric, but nothing will change her mind, except perhaps unremitting pain.
I keep thinking of a rather silly “slippery slope” argument that went through my brain in the wee hours some nights ago (having been woken up by pain I could not sleep through). It was in reaction to thinking about a friend’s slippery slope argument, but the idea fits here, as well. (I am not a philosopher or logician, so forgive me if I’ve got it all wrong.)
The idea was was that people ought not be allowed to eat meat. If we start eating any animals, it will obviously lead to people eating people:
1. Animals taste good and we consider animals food.
2. Animals are meat (muscle and blood and other stuff).
3. People are animals (in biological terms).
4. People are meat (yes–muscle and blood and other stuff).
Therefore, it is an obvious slippery slope that will lead people to eating people.
This seems like a perfectly sensible parallel argument to what Somerville is arguing. Does it hold water? If the rule by which I make this argument is flawed, then the rule by which Somerville makes her argument about the inevitability of us going on to kill others has the same flaw.
Well, that slippery slope has been descended by a number of people in a number of cultures, and in various extreme circumstances. That is why studies of cannibal societies and tales of cannibalism on the open sea or after a plane goes down in the Andes sell well. And that slippery slope has been ascended by many vegetarians, like Morrissey and I. I think that the argument that some things may very well lead to other related things for some people in some circumstances is usually a pretty valid one.
It is ridiculous to characterize any particular population as exclusively “vulnerable”. We have all been vulnerable to certain things at certain times due to our upbringing or personal circumstances. For instance, some teenage girls are pressured into sexual activity by their boyfriends. Would Margaret Somerville propose outlawing sex to address this problem or would she propose outlawing boyfriends?
Mulkieran,
Saying that cannibalism is the bottom of a slippery slope of meat eating is false. It’s not a slippery slope , it’s a non sequitur. As you pointed out, cannibalism happens I extreme situations, not because we choose to eat human meat as we do with other meat. No one on a lifeboat ever ate his shipmate if there was other food on board.
Margaret Sommerville makes a similar mistake when she steadfastly refuses to see the difference between choosing one’s own time of death and her choosing it for them.
I see no slippery slope maybe am a bit blind, but why would Margaret or anyone else want to decide when and how a person should die?
When they talk of natural death, do they use medicine to prolong their lives?
I would want to live knowing that when and if the time comes when I find my suffering intolerable that I would be granted the opportunity to die in dignity just as I have lived my life. I would not want to be kept in a vegetative state till I pass out from whatever cause it will be.
The religious have to give us a break or use reason not tied to their belief in a particular god to show us why they object to assisted dying.
Kevin,
There are cannibalistic societies which I doubt are otherwise vegetarian. Cannibalism is less common now than formerly, but it seems to have been quite common once. And human beings may choose to become vegetarians because they feel that the meat on their bones is like the meat on the bones of other animals and that they probably resemble animals in some other ways as well …I did. I think it is your response that does not follow my argument.
My statement is that the slippery slope argument is always partly valid because it is always partly true. One may move in either direction along the spectrum between vegetarianism and cannibalism. I was once a meat eater, now I’m a vegetarian, I was a vegan for about two years, I may have gnawed on my own hangnail a couple of times, but I’ve never cooked and eaten any part of a fellow human being as far as I’m aware.
There is a similar spectrum between
(1) everybody must be kept alive for as long as science can manage regardless of their wishes
(2) suicide on demand
and people can move back and forth on it by travelling from one postion to a not so dissimilar one on the spectrum.
I think you’re being a little too absolutist…next thing I know you’ll be telling me that life begins at conception or that killing people is just wrong, or something like that.
Eric,
“Even people who ask for assistance in dying don’t want to die. Of course not.”
I don’t love life and I do not imagine that I would feel as you say we all would. I learned recently of the death of a former colleague of mine of about my age from cancer, and my first feelings were of envy. I though something like, “Well, he doesn’t have to deal with all this stuff any more and no one will disparage him for having died so early. It’s cancer after all, everybody respects that.” I was well aware that his loss might be tragedy to his mother and his brother but I felt that, if it were me, I would have been glad to have the choice made for me in that way.
My best metaphor for my life is a large pile of shit which somebody shipped to my front porch. I do my best with it, growing a number of quite attractive flowers and nutritious vegetables, but I would prefer if it just hadn’t been visited on me and I wouldn’t mind if someone were sent to take it all away again.
My point is that your statement is rather too broad to really account for the vast variety of people in the world of whom I am one. I think you are aware of that yourself as in others of your posts you’ve spoken of the great pain and trouble of life.
Mulkieren. I don’t understand this:
Slippery slope arguments are usually taken as a form of informal fallacy, and I think, broadly speaking, that they are. They are really a form of the sorites paradox, such as evidenced in the questions: How many grains of sand does it take to make a heap? How many hairs does a man have to have on his face in order to say that he is bearded? And so on. Spectra from vegetarianism to cannibalism are not relevant to slippery slopes. The point of slippery slope arguments is that there is nothing that can stop the slide, and that is almost always false. One of the things that people like Somerville never tackle is the Swiss experience with assisted suicide. Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1941 and there is no sign at all of a slippery slope anywhere in evidence, despite its being a mountainous country!
As for your point about not loving life. I certainly wasn’t making a prescriptive point, as you take me to have done. I was just saying that, for most people who seek help in dying, they do not seek such aid because they want to die, but because there is no option between that and intolerable suffering. As for your Schopenhauerian distaste for life, I can feel the same way sometimes, yet here I am. If I really wanted to check out, I’d have done it by now.
David Benatar has an interesting book (published by Oxford) entitled Better Never to Have Been. He argues that since the slightest discomfort is worse than not existing, not existing would have been better. I’m not sure, and I haven’t read it for some time, but he makes a fairly compelling logical case. His point is that it would be better not to bring more life into existence, and humans should simply strive for zero population growth so that, in the end, we should disappear from the earth. Since human beings are growing like a cancer, it is arguable that the earth would be better off without us.
Yet it is hard to argue that consciousness, and human accomplishments amount to nothing of value. Life for many is, if not solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, as Hobbes said. And there are times when we might wish never to have been. However, having had the privilege of living with and loving and being loved by a remarkable young woman, who was simply instinct with life, and who, despite her many sufferings over the last 9 years of her life, regretted having to say goodbye, I cannot feel as you do about life. Before Elizabeth, life was pretty much a dead loss, after Elizabeth it was pure gain, even though she suffered and died. She knew the secret heart of joy, and to have shared that with her was indeed a great privilege.
Mulkieran,
If there are cannibalistic societies they are unknown to me. If you can cite one, I will concede the point. I know that there used to be. But that wasn’t my main point anyway.
There is simply not a spectrum between compelled imprisonment and choosing to leave. The difference is the autonomous agents decision. If I decide to end my life, it is my decision because I am the owner of that life. Either Margaret owns me or I do, there’s no slope there, there’s no spectrum. They are two completely different things.
If it happens that I find life intolerable then I will end it. It may be that I will have the physical ability to get a gun or take poison. Those are two possible means to my will but it could happen that I will have to ask someone who loves me to be the means. There’s no slope there, there’s no spectrum, it’s a sharp dividing line between Margaret’s decision and mine!
Hi Eric,
I think that what you’re saying is that people who use the slippery slope argument are saying that _all_ or at least most people must inevitably accept a if they accept b because a is just a stronger version of b (or somehow related to it).
But it is probably a mistake for people who oppose the slippery slope argument to say “But no! a and b are completely unrelated!” when they are, in fact, reasonably closely related and it is quite possible that some people, starting from a, would eventually end up at b. Maybe what they are saying is just a shorthand for “It seems that most people believe that a and b are different enough in some substantial way that they are unlikely to move from one to the other.” But if you then offer up a difference that your interlocutor does not find particularly compelling you’re not likely to be very convincing.
And it is not all that strong an argument to say, “Well it doesn’t seem to have turned out that way yet.” or “It hasn’t turned out that way in Switzerland.” Sometimes the people who have forebodings do turn out to be more correct than the optimistic ones.
The slippery slope argument is great for rhetorical impact, even though it is flawed rationally.
Presumably Margaret Somerville is also worried that the bread and wine of the Eucharist (Mass, Communion and all the other religious variants) that ‘becomes’ the flesh and blood of Jesus is the start of the slippery slope to cannibalism. If not, why not? Perhaps the slippery slope argument is not the slam dunk she wishes?
OK, I’ll try this one more time then I promise to shut up.
Margaret Sommerville is saying that if I don’t allow Margaret Sommerville to choose the time of my death then by some mysterious slippery slope someone else will choose the time of my death.
She’s saying that if I’m allowed to choose what I want for lunch then some other helpless person will be bullied by the waiter to have what the waiter wants to serve.
She’s making the completely absurd claim that granting autonomy to one real person leads to the loss of same to another hypothetical person so let’s deny the real person choice so as to preserve the imaginary persons choice.
I don’t have her eloquence so I can’t make it sound as ridiculous as she can.
I think you’ve put it rather well, Kevin.
Eric,
Careful, sounds a bit like “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest”
.
Yes, Haggis, but in this case it’s only a debate, and, so far, Somerville has changed the most minds! Which only goes to show that scare tactics work — and that HuffPo is read by a more conservative readership (perhaps?). I have renamed the post to reflect this.
Keven. Your first take is not correct: that’s not what she’s saying. What Somerville is claiming is that, if we legalise assisted dying, there is nothing that will stop the slide towards killing people who don’t want to die. In other words, she’s saying that no one should ever get to choose to shorten life, whether you or your doctor, or anyone else. According to her, it’s dangerous, and cannot be controlled, and that people will die who should not and do not want to, especially, she thinks, those who are “vulnerable.” And that is what you say in the rest of your comment. That is what she’s saying. It would not be ridiculous if this were shown actually to take place in places where assisted dying is legalised, but you have to twist the evidence in order to get it to fit in with Somerville’s analysis.
Mulkieran. I simply do not understand the points you are trying to make. First off, the so-called slippery slope argument comes in two forms, one is empirical, the other logical. The empirical argument says that there is evidence that you cannot stop the slide from providing assisted dying for those who are suffering intolerably to those who are vulnerable. Against this the facts in Switzerland and elsewhere are decisive. The logical argument is basically that you cannot make certain distinctions, so that basing a law on the ability to make such distinctions is inherently dangerous. Something like trying to decide when a bunch of grains of sand comprise a heap of sand. The danger is, say the opponents, that since you can’t make distinctions of the kind you suggest, the tendency will be to slide from one case to another until people are being killed whether they want it or not. I don’t think this is the case. The distinctions are not all that hard to make, especially if you vest the choice in the person who is suffering. Those who oppose assisted dying say that in that case the autonomy of some people is in question, and they might be under pressure, or in other ways having the decision foist upon them. Of course, any reasonable law would have to provide checks against people being pressured, by greedy heirs, for instance, to end their lives. But there is no obvious reason why these kinds of checks cannot be devised, and Somerville certainly has not shown that they cannot be. She simply thinks that we would come to disvalue human life and make abuse of assisted dying laws inevitable. To this argument empirical evidence is also pertinent, though perhaps not decisive, for she is saying that the long term danger would still be there. I do not think that is necessarily the case. Indeed, it seems to me that the opposite danger is greater: that we would simply become inured to great suffering, and come to lack compassion for those who are suffering. There is evidence that this is already happening. I am not, of course, saying that Somerville’s argument is simply foolish. But I am saying that it is governed much more by religious dogma than it is by likely outcomes.
Hi Eric,
I think that the problem is that I’m thinking like a statistician and that you’re not.
You say you can contradict Somerville’s slippery slope argument by pointing out that in, e.g., Switzerland and Oregon what she predicts will inevitably occur has not happened. That’s good enough as far as it goes, but “it has not happened” does not imply “it cannot happen”.
From a statistical point of view, you’ve taken a small and non-representative sample, e.g., Switzerland and Oregon, from a very large population, i.e., all the nations of the world, you’ve ascertained a fact that holds true for the sample, and you’ve then predicted that it will hold true for the whole population. That’s bad statistics.
To actually support your conclusion you’ld have to show that, e.g., Texas, Nigeria, and all the other places are just like Switzerland and Oregon in the ways that matter, whatever those might be. I’m not sure that they are.
If the only place you’re making a prediction about is Canada, your argument might be a bit stronger. I know next to nothing about Canada but I think it’s likely that Oregon is more like Canada than it is like Texas.
I wish you’ld use shorter paragraphs. I have great difficulty following what you’re saying.
Mulkieran. Sorry about the long paragraphs.
I’m not thinking statistically, because Somerville is not. She’s making a general statement about what will happen if assisted dying is legalised. Certainly, there may be differences between contexts, but Somerville’s point is more general than that. So is the point the Roman Catholic Church is making. For them it is a conceptual issue. Their argument is not empirical but logical. They’re saying that once you qualify the inviolability of life, respect for life will be irrevocably damaged, and the outcome will result in danger for everyone.
While I agree that there may be circumstances in which it would be unwise to legalise assisted dying, this is not, in general, the case, because laws can be written which will stop the anticipated slide. Even in extreme circumstances, the law can be tightened enough to make abuse less likely. Assisted dying is legal in Columbia, where, if anywhere, you’d think abuse might occur, because of the very unstable condition of things in that country due to drug trafficking and revolutionary movements. But it hasn’t.
Of course, the possibility of abuse is always present, whatever the circumstances, and sometimes, no doubt, abuse will occur, even in Canada, but it would be illegal, and, just like murder, it would be liable to legal sanctions. All public policy has to take into account the possibility of abuse, but there is simply no evidence that such abuse would render such a law unavoidably dangerous. And the onus is on the person who wants to abridge a right — and I think it is a liberty right that everyone should have to take control of their dying — to show that the danger of the slippery slope is not only real but unavoidable. The fact that it has been avoided in Switzerland, Oregon, etc., is evidence that it is not unavoidable, and that the justification for continuing to force people to die in conditions of misery and servitude is without foundation.