A Right to Die? Thoughts on Euthanasia
A critical view of the debate on euthanasia
(First published at Exzibit.net on 13 June 2005)
The Lords are continuing to debate the infamous Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill bill in this parliamentary session. So far it looks like Britain has come a few steps closer to a legalised euthanasia. The Lords plan to give ‘a right to die’ to the patients who are terminally ill, experiencing unbearable pains, against which the palliative treatment is powerless. There will be a plenty of typically bureaucratic procedures. The Lords insist on allowing euthanasia only to those, who are fully aware of what they ask for. It is stipulated that 14 days should pass between a patient submitting a request for euthanasia and the act of ‘assisted dying’. In these days, a patient would sign a declaration, which is to be witnessed by at least one solicitor, and a monitoring committee will scrutinise every single case.
Euthanasia is permitted or legalised in a number of countries. The Lords used statistical evidence for the American State of Oregon, where the right to die is a law. It is also a law in Belgium, and is accepted in the Netherlands. However, in Australia a similar law has recently been ruled out.
Although there has been a number of appeals to the State in various countries from people whose condition would qualify for an assisted dying, on most occasions this is neither permitted by the State, nor welcomed by the relatives. Terry Schiavo’s case is well-known, as is an attempt of the parents of baby Charlotte to win against her doctors. However, these are the cases when a person in question is unaware of these procedures and cannot make any reasonable contribution to the debate. We may say that the doctors are heartless, but so may be the parents of a patient who want to keep their dear ones live, even if living brings onto them “unbearable pain”. One can speculate, whether a true motivation of the parents in this case is their love for a child or a subconscious desire to walk one’s own via crucis. However cruel may be this proposition, it certainly rises in hopeless cases.
An issue as sensitive as euthanasia raises a plenty of questions. ‘Does a person have a right to die?’ is perhaps the one which is most brutally discussed by theologians, politicians, and ordinary mortals. Life, it is believed, is given to a man by God, and it’s up to God, and not to a man, to take this life away. Thus, beside all ethical issues, euthanasia also challenges religion, and our view of God’s power and the concept of predestination.
This may sound altogether hypocritical. It is usually presumed that a man cannot take his life himself, yet we also pitifully admit that it is usual for other people to take a man’s life. On the day-to-day basis God has no voice at all, it seems. However, when the law is involved, morals and faith are remembered and brought into a consideration. The opponents of the British Bill, The Christian Medical Fellowship and the Lawyer’s Christian Fellowship, believe that even a mortally ill person has no right for a premature assisted death, and thus condemn the Lords’ action. The British Nurses have also had a share in the debate. Not only did they condemn the Lords’, they also put forward their own reasons. The real problem, as it seems, is not that a patient actually suffers beyond measure, but that the conditions in which he is waiting for his life to end leave a lot to be desired.
As I was reading the cited explanation, I couldn’t help remembering Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The Savage’s mother was dying in a ward where she had everything she wanted. In particular, she was watching TV all the time. Of course, to say that the real-life patients suffer from the lack of entertainment means to underrate the extent of physical and psychological pain. Yet again arguments like these show that, once gravely ill, a patient is barely taken into a consideration. No-one is even trying to perceive the extent of his own suffering; instead, the entire focus is placed on whether or not a wish to die or to be assisted in dying goes against God’s will and humane functions of a man. Precious and high-flown categories, like charity, humility and love, are drawn to support this view, as well as arguments in favour of palliative care of all sorts.
More and more calls in favour of euthanasia for gravely ill patients come from the art world. The very recent appeal from Spain even got an Oscar. Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside) tells a story of Ramon Sampedro, a Spanish marine and a poet, who had an accident in his late twenties and was paralysed for almost 30 years. He became an ardent supporter of assisted dying, and the film evokes his trial for a right to die. The trial disapproved of Sampedro’s appeal. The suicide he eventually committed was an assisted one, yet illegal.
As it should have happened with a film like this, it provoked numerous discussions. I was greatly impressed with a forum at www.imdb.com, which consisted of two English parts and a Spanish one in between. The two main things I gathered from the English forumites’ posts were, quite predictably, as follows: first, euthanasia is a deep disrespect of a patient to his relatives, doctors, country, etc.; second, despite the fact that we have many rights, a right to grant life and death seems to belong to a transcendent power, and not to us. This is a rather curious discrepancy: in the religiously indifferent society people still access their lives in terms of a divine impact on them. Sampedro’s answer to this was laconic and ruthless: ‘Whose life is it, anyway?’
The really insolvable problem is embedded in the mentioned question. When speaking of life, should not we discern between two actions? Indeed, we receive it from a resource, and whether we prefer to think of it as a woman’s womb, or as God, this does not change the essence: at the moment of reception, we are inactive. Having received the life, however, we embark on a more or less active process of living it. Of course, there may be predestination, but its very existence depends on a personal disposition. It is not an exception for people to believe in destiny when something good is happening to them, and to refute it completely when nothing good is going on, which is again an active choice. So, in total, when we debate whether or not it is acceptable to commit an assisted suicide, it is in truth a question of who we consider to be the true owner of our lives, and of what rights we see as belonging to us inherently.
And, finally, a paradoxical bit. As already stated, when euthanasia is involved, otherwise apathetic society becomes very concerned. This concern takes the problem on a whole new level, that is, philosophical. Debating whether or not it is possible to kill oneself or to help a person die, we debate what Albert Camus called ‘a truly philosophical problem – that of suicide’. And having arrived at this level, one has to admit that the ultimate solution is never to be found. One has to accept that it is easier to put all responsibility on an overwhelmingly powerful ‘third party’, commonly known as God – that way we avoid debating this problem. Arguably, no-one has ever put it into words better than Shakespeare:
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come… (Hamlet, III, 1).
So, with the help of appeals pro and contra euthanasia every member of society becomes a philosopher, even though rather often we tend to challenge philosophy as a too contemplative discipline. It may be a progress, except for one important thing. A philosopher strives for the broadest view possible, not ignoring facts that potentially undermine his theory. In the debate on euthanasia, two important facts are omitted, as a rule. Euthanasia is not a suicide in the strictest sense of the word; it is only applicable to those who experience immense pain and are on the brink of dying. This fact makes an exception for such people, and the very concept of charity, when drawn to these cases, appears to be ridiculed. But, most importantly, as the proposed Bill states, patients should be asked for an opinion. If we agree with Camus that suicide is the first truly philosophical problem, then the second one may well be that of happiness. And if so, why should we think that bearing those pains makes a patient happier, than facing the prospect of dying?
