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Opinion,
Comment & Reviews
Ethical issues |
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Why
those who favour abortion rights should oppose the legalisation
of assisted suicide
By Kevin Yuill
kevin.yuill@vigin.net
31/08/01
The case of Dianne Pretty has again brought the issue
of assisted suicide into the public arena.
Pretty, from Luton, Bedfordshire in the UK - who suffers from
the incurable degenerative disorder motor neurone disease
- will file papers at the High Court in London arguing that
her quality of life is so low that she has the right under
human rights legislation to choose to die. Specifically, she
wishes to ensure that her husband Brian will not be prosecuted
if he helps her commit suicide.
Pretty's case is a heart-wrenching story of the suffering
of one family. But it has also become yet another salvo in
the war between those who want to change the law that currently
prohibits assisting suicides, and those who resist a change
in the law. Those in favour of changing the law appear to
have the upper hand at the moment.
In 2000, Holland became the first country to allow assisted
suicide (in the USA, assisted suicide is only legal in the
state of Oregon). Belgium, Switzerland and Spain are considering
laws to validate living wills. A poll taken five years ago
found that 82 percent of the British public agreed with euthanasia.
Veteran broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy stood as a parliamentary
candidate for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society in Devizes,
Wiltshire in the 2001 general election, winning two percent
of the vote.
As the debate goes on, many who support legalising assisted
suicide have drawn parallels with the issue of abortion. For
example, it was reported in June 2001 that an Australian doctor
was planning to take advantage of the new law in Holland by
buying a Dutch-registered ship and setting up a floating euthanasia
clinic, mirroring the publicity stunt by Women on Waves, who
sailed from Holland to Dublin in what was billed as a floating
abortion clinic.
Though medical practitioners and disabled rights groups also
oppose a change in the law, the most visible groups are the
same absolutist pro-life groups that oppose abortion. The
opposition of this vocal minority to the liberalisation of
suicide law brings many liberals into the opposite camp. ('By
their enemies shall ye know them….')
Pro-life groups certainly use every opportunity to link the
issues. BBC Online carries an article by Mike Willis, chairman
of the Pro-Life Alliance, as representative of the opposition
to assisted suicide. He begins by stating that '[t]he drive
for legalised euthanasia shares common roots with the legalisation
of abortion in 1967. Promoters of these practices take a utilitarian
view of human life rather than viewing all human life as uniquely
created and deserving of absolute respect'. Towards the end
of the article, he froths 'we have seen the torrent of death
in Holland' (have we?), and finishes with the dramatic, '[t]he
elderly will go the same way as the unborn - unwanted, useless
bread gobblers - but who will be next?'.
In fact, the issues of abortion and euthanasia are entirely
different, and those with liberal views on abortion should
think hard before automatically supporting the liberalisation
of laws governing euthanasia.
For a start, abortion addresses a real demand. Without the
right to abortion, huge numbers of women would be saddled
with children they did not want. In Britain, over 150,000
women per year have abortions and an estimated three million
have taken place since 1973. By contrast, in terms of euthanasia,
the 'torrent of death' in Holland amounts to 4000 per year,
a figure not expected to change after legalisation.
Only two to three percent of terminally ill patients in Holland
opt for assisted suicide. Those involved with the Hospice
movement - who also oppose legalisation of assisted suicide
- protest that it is possible to alleviate physical pain with
modern drugs, and point out that no study to date in any country
has shown that pain plays a major role in requests for assisted
suicide. Depression - not pain - is the real reason for assisted
suicides. Ironically, even prominent terminally ill campaigners
for assisted suicide, such as former acid-guru Dr Timothy
Leary in the USA, and Noel Early and Annie Linsell in the
UK, backed out of taking their own lives.
There is a fundamental difference in the demands of those
campaigning about abortion law, and those campaigning for
legalisation of assisted suicide. Abortion is about life:
valuing the life of a woman over the potential life of a fetus,
and enabling that woman greater choice over her future. Assisted
suicide is about death, and the negation of any future.
Whereas abortion can give hope to a woman, perhaps freeing
her to pursue a career, assisted suicide is the epitome of
hopelessness. Whatever the strange, quasi-religious arguments
of the campaigners for legal assisted suicide ('Assurance
of a humane death enhances the celebration of life' reads
the by-line of an organisation called Compassion in Dying),
death is the end of hope. The campaign for assisted suicide
elevates a defeatist, 'opt-out' culture to the level of a
strategy for coping with future problems.
The call for abortion on request is about freedom: a woman's
freedom to determine what is best for her, without veto by
the state. As the law currently stands, it is the doctors
who make that decision on the woman's behalf. The campaign
for assisted suicide is the opposite demand: the 'right to
die' is really the right to die at any time and to
be assisted in doing so, thereby giving the state the extraordinary
ability to sanction killing people 'for their own good'.
Suicide is, after all, legal. Should anybody be really determined
to end it all, they could nearly always, with a little forward
planning, do so. Certainly, each one of the American assisted
suicide campaigner Dr Jack Kevorkian's 'patients' had the
physical means to eventuate their own deaths at the time that
they died. Calls for the 'right to die' are ultimately pleas
for recognition of despondency and depression as incurable
diseases. Moreover, they would force doctors into the process
(no wonder that most doctors oppose its legalisation).
In some ways, anti-abortion and pro-assisted suicide groups
have in common a tendency to redefine what human life is,
and to reduce its worth. By contrasting the rights of a potential
life to an actual life, anti-abortion activists risk reducing
human life to its lowest common biological denominator. Similarly,
assisted suicide activists would force a definition of 'quality
of life'. As disability activists argue, to define a life
afflicted with disease as worth less than a healthy one is
wrong.
In truth, no line can be drawn between a terminally ill patient's
request and a healthy 19-year-old's request for suicide. Both
might change their minds. Can anybody really say that the
19-year-old's request is less valid or that theirs is worth
more? Would differential treatment in law apply in murder
cases? Legalisation of assisted suicide would unquestionably
legitimise the destruction of existing members of our society,
real lives, for no better reason than that they are wretched.
A society that presents suicide as an option disseminates
hopelessness and fear of the future. Those who are really
'pro-life' should support abortion rights and oppose the campaign
for assisted suicide. |
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