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May 27, 2024 - 9:40am
One of the best lines in The History Boys, Alan Bennett’s play about brilliant young students at a Yorkshire grammar school, goes: “Nothing saves anyone’s life — it just postpones their death.”
This logic could easily be adapted to the global debate on euthanasia, particularly in the prosperous West. As science rapidly develops, and lifespans are prolonged thanks to quickly improving medicines and far healthier lifestyles, some feel they should have more control over their own existence.
If they want to end their days prematurely because of chronic illness, it is argued, then nothing should stop them doing so simply and painlessly. The technology to postpone death is readily available, so why not take advantage of techniques that bring it forward, particularly when staying alive is becoming unbearable?
This certainly seems to be the view behind legislation, set to be debated in the French parliament today, that would allow what President Emmanuel Macron calls “assisted dying”. Choosing his words carefully, he said lethal injections, pills or drinks would be made accessible to adults who are “capable of full and complete discernment”, while suffering from incurable diseases.
Macron insists on the expression “help in dying” because it describes a process that is “simple and humane”, he said, but opponents accuse him of reducing the highly contentious debate to semantics. Getting someone to assist with another person’s death is quite obviously a variation of euthanasia, and, indeed, medically assisted suicide.
The arguments are particularly bitter in France, where there is a perennial divide between a fiercely secular, technologically driven state, and a far more traditional country rooted in Roman Catholicism and old-fashioned family values that include looking after someone from cradle to grave, no matter their condition.
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SubscribeHere are my thoughts on the Assisted Dying debate:
http://grahamstull.com/2024/04/10/assisted-dying-my-thoughts-on-the-subject/
Graham, thanks for the link to your post. As is often the case with Unherd, the comments provide greater nuance than the original article.
As someone caring for a terminally ill spouse in a country with virtually no palliative care available, this is an issue I am grappling with every day. Ultimately it is the patient’s wishes that should be respected, but I accept that there are cases where undue influence could be brought to bear to skew that decision. The patient’s faith should also be taken into account so in my view there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution.
It is a devilishly thorny dilemma for which is not easy to legislate. The UK was about to propose a similar law which has widespread support from MPs, but it looks as though Rishi’s bailout may scupper that.
I agree that a person’s faith is relevant, but it is for the person themselves to “take it into account”. If their religious belief says that taking one’s own life is wrong, then they are at liberty to not take their own life. However, those of us without religious belief should not be precluded from doing so.
More precisely, those of us without religious belief should not face prosecution for assisting the death of a loved one, when it’s their clearly expressed wish that we should do so (where they’re unable to do so of their own volition).
There are ways and means of ensuring the “expressed wish” is unambiguously their preferred option, not something they’ve been emotionally (or otherwise) induced into accepting. Those who cite “slippery slopes” shouldn’t be allowed to dictate to the sure-footed; the slipperiness is something for them to overcome.
Thanks Rocky. God bless you and your wife.
All very interesting. However, you say “hedonism underpins our culture now” as if it is a bad thing. Like most religious people, you think your religious view is the “right” one, and everyone else is “wrong”. I can say the following with some clarity – I am on this earth to have fun, and I am unencumbered by anything that could be described as “religious belief”. When life stops being fun for me, I am out. If the State won’t assist me, I’ll deal with it myself (I am lucky to live in a place where guns are legal, and I have some). If the religious have a problem with my view, it is their problem, not mine. I should point out that I am 61, so the issue is likely to be real one at some point in the next 20 years.
It’s your life, not the state’s. When writers use expressions like “euthanasia” (which is associated with ending the suffering of our domestic animals) or (assisted) “suicide” (which is often associated with mental illness) they are using words to with a strong stigma. That’s why Macron quite reasonably doesn’t want to advocate or legislate a course of action by stigmatizing it.
I can’t honestly say the words matter to me, it is the action. To fall back on an old euphemism of British origin, when my life stops being fun, I’m going to top myself.
Well euthanasia just means “good death” so the fact that it acquired such a stigma ought to tell you something about the nature of the thing for which you are arguing. Not coincidentally, the word with the most similar construction, eugenics, likewise means “good birth”.
As for Macron’s use of “aid in dying”, this is clearly a ridiculous phrase, regardless of your views on the issue. One can imagine a murder suspect’s defence being that they merely provided the victim with “aid in dying”…
If they want to end their days prematurely because of chronic illness, it is argued, then nothing should stop them from doing so simply and painlessly.
And nothing does stop them. People are and always have been free to end their lives should they wish to do so. That’s not the point. The point is having the state be involved in the process. As Canada has so dubiously demonstrated, this is among the slipperiest of slopes.
That country’s MAID law has become so convoluted that people with nothing approaching a chronic illness are being killed – excuse me, allowed to die – mostly because their continued presence offends the state and its budget watchers.
Yup. The poor and elderly are being driven towards killing themselves with the help of the state.
I take it that you have no problem whatsoever with the poor and the elderly killing themselves without the help of the state?
If the Canadian laws are a problem, don’t copy those. Copy the Australian laws – all the Australian states have Voluntary Assisted Dying laws. Working fine.
I haven’t done a direct comparison between the Australian and Canadian laws, but I have never received a satisfactory answer on what is so bad about the Canadian ones (in the interests of full disclosure, I live in Western Australia, where the laws are comparatively new).