It’s the philosophy which underlies the permitting of euthanasia that’s the key issue
EUTHANASIA is an issue that has come to the fore once more in Guernsey, with our well-liked former chief minister championing the cause in the States. Should our elected representatives decide to legalise it this time around, that would be a tragedy indeed. As Mr de Carteret pointed out in his letter on 1 May, there are dire consequences for society when such a thing is permitted, as governments’ experimentations with this practice have lead, almost inexorably, to the weakening of once-strict safeguards. But this is not the key issue – rather, it is the philosophy which underlies the permitting of euthanasia in the first place.
For, if the old and the terminally ill and the suffering can be killed with no moral qualms, then it would logically follow that human life has no intrinsic value at all. And so why should we put up safeguards? Why should we restrict the freedoms of those not chronically ill or dying? It surely cannot be because their lives have worth, unless one would seek to make the case that it is only certain lives which have worth – and that worth is determined by those individual’s physical health (a grim proposition indeed). Euthanasia advocates must reject the idea that human life has intrinsic value, but they offer no clear alternative view. Consent, they often say, is a necessary factor, but consent cannot be the sole condition, because the full implications of that are uncomfortable even to those who believe that the value of human life has to be qualified. So what then? Consent combined with a terminal condition? Perhaps combined with a greater-than-or-equal-to-7.5-out-of-10 on the pain scale? Who decides? Shall we form a committee to sit and discuss who among us lose the most fundamental human right – the right to life? Will it be up to politicians? Doctors? Perhaps a vote? Shall we conduct a referendum on who amongst us really can be killed? Cast a ballot on which part of the population can be culled?
But many euthanasia advocates do not stop at merely undermining the right to life – no! That would be far too mild. Instead, they propose that there exists a ‘right to die’. Now, this ‘right’ is a curious right to be sure. As far as I am aware, no other human right spawns into existence once one becomes a senior citizen (and if you will protest that voting, for example, is only permitted at a certain age, I would say that that is a political right (or even a privilege) rather than a fundamental human right). To have a human right be contingent upon the physical or mental health of an individual would surely call into question the entire concept of rights that has been shared not just by many of us, but by our ancestors dating back centuries.
The fact of the matter is that if the claim euthanasia advocates make is true, and there is no absolute value to human life, then they would be right to make it accessible to everyone.
But their claim is false. We are more than flesh bags with chemicals inside. We are not worthless, nor can we be disposed of when we become ‘undesirable’ – whether that be because of age, illness, disability or poverty.
Furthermore, we ought not try to sanitise such a dark act as suicide. GK Chesterton once described it as ‘the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men. As far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.’ Such a thing should certainly not be permitted (or God forbid subsidised) by the state. Perhaps there is a reason that suicide is taboo, seen as ugly, dark, an awful way to die. Perhaps that reason is because it is all of those things. Maybe, just maybe, we ought, as a society, to discourage suicide. But perhaps that is too much to ask.
Christina Kennedy