A prominent English orchestral conductor decides he's tired of life, flies with his terminally ill wife to a Swiss clinic, accompanied by their adult children (!), then, along with the missus, drinks a cup of suicide sauce. Given the fact that there was nothing wrong with Sir Edward Downes, not all assisted suicide advocates are pleased:
But even among those who support decriminalizing assisted suicide, Sir Edward's death raised troubling questions. Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said in a BBC interview that the growing numbers of Britons going abroad to die, and the manner of their deaths, made it more urgent to amend Britain's laws. There are "no safeguards, no brakes on the process at all," she said.
Well, why should the state have anything to say about it, if suicide is a "right"? If we belong to no one but ourselves, and are responsible only to ourselves, and if choice is the highest value -- well, what's Sarah Wootton's problem?
We shall very soon proceed from the "right" to die to the "duty" to die, when one is seen, or made to see oneself, as a burden on the living. Wesley J. Smith warns, once again:
Who will protect despairing and fearful people, who may fear being burdens or may be depressed, from self destruction if their own families won't stand in the way of their suicides? I find such attitudes utterly incomprehensible.But this goes beyond terminal non judgmentalism. We are becoming a suicide friendly culture. I just don't see any other way to look at it.
Culture of death, Wesley? What culture of death?
What true thing can possibly be said about a culture that exalts ordered, ritualized and hygienic self-murder -- especially of the non-diseased -- as an act of valorous liberty, except that such a culture is in terminal decline? We recoil in horror from Islamic suicide bombers, as we certainly ought, but at least those malicious ghouls are killing themselves, and, in the case of their Islamist death-cult societies, honoring self-murder, in the service of some higher ideal. What's our excuse? What's our higher ideal justifying this obscene defilement of humanity, of the human person, of human solidarity, and ultimately of the image of God within us all? Autonomy? Comfort? We begin by murdering God, we end by murdering ourselves. Pass the soma, Lenina.
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I'm with Observer on this. Medically assisted suicide has been around as long as medicine, but it was always done in a quiet suggestive sort of way. From my experience with terminally ills family members and my years in health care, I can tell you exactly how I saw it handled.
Terminally ill patients usually have access to large amounts of narcotic painkillers. The doctor would say something like this:
"You need to be very careful taking this medication. It is very potent. If you take a dose above X, especially if you mix it with too much of drug Y that you also take, then you will go to sleep and never wake up. Take care of your dosages."
I have directly heard some version of this conversation at least a half-dozen times over the years, and heard second-hand dozens more. Everyone on both sides of the discussion instantly knew that this was less of a warning being given than an option, and the patients and families, including my own, were grateful and understood. It placed the choice and responsibility directly on the patient. If that patient chose that option, then the medical examiners office usually reported the death as an accidental overdose rather than a suicide. It is pretty common for terminally ill and elderly patients to accidentally double or triple dose a medication just out of forgetfulness.
The whole thing had it's own dignity which I don't see in these new legal setups. It placed the decision squarely on the patient, instead of requring doctors to play the part of executioner. Unfortunately we now can't stand to have any part of life that is not covered by some explicit legal mechanism.
My Husband had ALS. He died naturally and with dignity, in his sleep, thank God! He didn't die like most ALS patients (of which we were both prepared, but sorely afraid). He was 50 years old...
I was there with our adult Daughters. God was merciful. There is little beauty or dignity in death, yet he determined to journey with grace.
Suicide, self-murder, has little dignity or grace and leaves behind a world of "what-ifs" and unanswerable questions...not to mention grief and guilt. Honouring the Imago Dei also means honouring that which befalls us as we lurch towards the Creator.
I am appalled at the thought of suicide. I am not appalled at the thought of death. I've had my Parents and my Husband show to me the way...
Like it or not, there will be more of this in the future. There will even be varieties of voluntary or semi-planned end of life, along the lines of the Do Not Resuscitate orders that we have now.
I've had two or three relatives in their nineties take 15 years or so fade away with senility/Alzheimer's. They spent that time doing some mix of haranguing and terrorizing their nurses and caretaking relatives, falling into increasingly vegetative, dismal, states. Their dying was ultimately a blessing for all involved. What it cost in suffering for their caretakers and in money I'd rather not even contemplate. Like for Terry Schiavo, the fetishizing of physical life and discounting of the loss of the psychological kind led to mere misery, waste, and morally awful situations.
Their generation generally was unwilling to sign any order permitting death, an end to care, when they were mentally no longer coherent and beyond recovery. And yet, suicide of the elderly began with them and has risen markedly since- they and Silent Generationers don't trust others and don't want to deal with the disapproval of their children and peers. So they do it themselves.
I think Silent Generationers feel their life tasks incomplete and are distrusting enough as cohorts that few of them will sign such things. Boomers, probably a substantial minority. GenX/Y...hard to say, but I wouldn't be surprised if a majority proves willing.
The popular 'religious' reasoning seems to me incoherent and are social status and bad relationship reasons. The deeper argument against suicide (and murder) seem to be that it's wrong to deprive people of life as long as there is potential of some inner development, of any progress on the presumed religious life journey.
That thinking has as its conclusion that those who truly can get no further, or who have taken the inner journey to its end, are permitted to die. At the far extreme, one point of mystic union, it is said, is that to the mystic there is no longer a true or deep distinction between physical life and death for him/her. (Other than still being able to serve the good by staying in the world.) I doubt many people attain that condition, but the wisest old people seem generally to accept its view.
Which leaves the mentally unstable, and those in bad relationships, who think that it's all either opportunity or a way in which society intends to get rid of them.
Thanks Rich, nice post.
I can't believe the author prefers suicide bombers to this couple who clearly loved each other (at least bombers do it out of a higher principle. Are you kidding?!!?) Suicide bombers takes hundreds of innocents with them, a fact that seems lost on the author. I was looking for intelligent points of view on this topic. I guess I'll have to keep searching.
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