Assisted Suicide: a round up

Fr Tim has posted, and provided links, about concern being expressed by Multiple Sclerosis charities after the recent Law Lords ruling in the Purdy case. "Although they are non-committal on the morality of assisted suicide, the charities are clearly not happy with the way that MS has been portrayed in the propaganda supporting this case." The quotations offered by Fr Tim clearly express a need to make provision to care for patients and families/carers affected by multiple sclerosis. I will come back to this point later in this post.

Another useful post to read is this one at Dophinarium, and its links. It brings out the role of the media in promoting euthanasia / assisted suicide in recent days. This article in The Times from Dominic Lawson also points out a media manipulation - of the determination of the actual judgement: Don't book a ticket to Dignitas just yet. Dominic Lawson also offers a useful presentation of what the Law Lords said, in particular with regard to an earlier explanation by the Director of Public Prosecutions about one of his decisions following a death at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. He ends his article by pointing out the utter contradiction in Debbie Purdy's claim that the judgement gave her her life back:

Yet when I saw her [Debbie Purdy] declare last Thursday, “I feel like I have my life back”, my stomach heaved. It is a sick society that regards assisted suicide as an affirmation of life.

As we have seen with the trivialisation of the grounds on which abortions are carried out, the legalisation of assisted suicide or euthanasia will have a mirror effect back on to how a range of medical conditions are considered. Indeed, even the discussion of such a legalisation is already affecting how chronic illness is viewed in society. How people view conditions which are chronic, but not terminal, will change.

Matthew Parris wrote a piece "Why I'm opposed to legalising assisted suicide" in The Times on Saturday 1st August. If I have understood the reason for his opposition correctly, it is expressed in his last paragraphs:

It is one thing for the State to decline, at its discretion, to prosecute someone who has killed without authority. It is quite another thing for the State to issue an authority to kill. We do best, I think, to stay on that first, more limited, ground. It may be messier, it may be cloudier; but it’s philosophically less dangerous.

But, in his first paragraphs, Matthew Parris sets up the arguments - not the ones that underpin his conclusion - in favour of assisted suicide.

... if Nature does not do the job in a timely manner I shall consider it a duty to take matters into my own hands. For me it would be wretched, self-defeating, selfish, irrational, inefficient and pointlessly extravagant to live beyond the time when I am useful, or life is fun.

And, from the next paragraph:

For me it would be wretched, self-defeating, selfish, irrational, inefficient and pointlessly extravagant to live beyond the time when I am useful, or life is fun....The knowledge that I’m here by choice, that every breath I take I take by choice, injects into my soul a transcendent joy. That we can let go whenever we want is for me the deepest sort of thrill.

Matthew Parris presents suicide as "the supreme act of defiance, the final raspberry". We might want to use another word to describe this: it is the supreme act of despair, which is why the Catholic Church viewed it so severely in the past and still teaches that it is a "grave offence" forbidden by the fifth commandment (cf Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church Q.470).

Underlying all of this, though, is the question of the meaning of life. This question is not just one that is discussed in the hallowed halls of academia; it arises at the bed side of the person who is seriously ill or who is infirm as a result of age. It is a very practical question. The field of pastoral and spiritual care in hospitals is all about this. It is about trying to give patients who are seriously ill a sense of meaning to their present situation, and, as life come to its end, a sense of meaning to their earlier life. For some this is a religious meaning, but not for all.

Hope is the opposite of despair, and so is what one really wants to bring to the person who is seriously or chronically ill. To express the purpose or value of life in terms of "usefulness" or of "fun" is profoundly contrary to the promotion of hope - it limits the valuing of life to the situation of being able to be self-reliant and independent of the help of others. And we are all at different times in our lives going to be in situations where we depend on others for help and, indeed, in situations where others may depend on us for help. This is particularly true, though not exclusive to, situations of clincial illness. And there is nothing wrong with this; it is, in a certain sense, entirely natural.

A tremendous witness to this idea of hope is the number if situations where someone in hospital, particularly if they are elderly, is visited by their family. And, in some cases, a patient takes quite a pride in their visitors and will speak very highly of them. The last thing that these people need is the pressure of legalised euthanasia or assisted suicide. I sometimes meet older people, who may also be sick, who worry about the trouble they cause to other people. What I try to say to them is that, if they look back on their lives, they will probably be able to think of times when they helped other people - and that now it just happens to be their turn to be in need of help and that they have an entitlement to it. One could argue that the point of view presented by Matthew Parris is profoundly discriminatory against older people and against those suffering from chronic conditions since they are going to be disproportionately in need of help when compared to others in society.

Which brings me back to the first paragraph of this post. For a whole range of conditions, what is really needed is appropriate help and support for patients, families and carers. And support that is spiritual as well as physical. What is needed is hope not despair, a culture of life not a culture of death.