As I write this the ‘jury is out’ on two right-to-die cases. The first involves a woman, Miss B, with quadriplegia after a spinal haemorrhage who wants her ventilator switched off. The second is that of Diane Pretty, a 43 year old woman with motor neurone disease, who is wanting the European Court of Human Rights to ensure that her husband will not be prosecuted if he ‘helps her die’.
It is now eight years since the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics, after an extensive enquiry, recommended that there should be no change to the law on euthanasia. The committee, set up in 1993 in the light of the Nigel Cox and Tony Bland verdicts, took many submissions during its deliberations. Of these the Department of Health, the Home Office, The British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing, along with many other medical, Christian and prolife groups all argued against any change in the law, and the final conclusion was unanimous. The chairman, Lord Walton, reflecting in a speech to the House of Lords on 9 May 1994, said:
‘We concluded that it was virtually impossible to ensure that all acts of euthanasia were truly voluntary and that any liberalisation of the law in the United Kingdom could not be abused. We were also concerned that vulnerable people - the elderly, lonely, sick or distressed - would feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to request early death.’
Terminally ill people are vulnerable. They lack the knowledge and skill to alleviate their own symptoms, and may well be suffering from fear about the future and anxiety about the effect their illness is having on others. It is very difficult for them to be objective about their own situation, and this is often exacerbated by depression or a false sense of worthlessness.
Many elderly people too already feel a burden to family, carers and a society which is cost conscious and short of resources. They could potentially feel great pressure to request euthanasia ‘freely and voluntarily’. Assisted suicide was legalised in the State of Oregon after a referendum in 1997. Of those who died as a result in the following three years, the percentage who felt themselves to be burdensome increased from 12% to 63%. Furthermore the decision to request assisted suicide was associated not with fear of intractable pain but with concern about loss of autonomy or control of bodily functions. Many of the patients ‘had been decisive and independent throughout their lives’ and could not cope with being weak or dependent. Never having married was the most decisive social factor, 24 times more common amongst these patients than a control group.
Our Western cultural inheritance, which has opposed both euthanasia and suicide, is part Hellenic and part Judeo-Christian. The Pythagoreans, who were instrumental in formulating the Hippocratic Oath, were opposed to all forms of suicide, as were Socrates, Plato and Aristotle - for a variety of economic, political and religious grounds. In the Judeo-Christian tradition human lives are seen as God’s possession, and not ours to do with as we choose. The subsequent cultural shift in Western culture can be traced over the centuries through the thought of humanistic writers like Donne, Hume, Voltaire, Goethe and Hemingway. In these and others we see a progressive loss of belief in any afterlife and a growing conviction that everyone should have free disposal of ‘one’s own’ life. In this scheme, having euthanasia is a way of ‘maintaining control’; being independent, and not being a burden becomes the ultimate virtue. Selfdetermination becomes all consuming.
How different Paul’s exhortation to the Galatians to ‘carry each others burdens, and in this way...fulfil the law of Christ’[1]. The specific context here is the personal cost of restoring a fellow Christian who has sinned; but it has a wider application. The law of love,[2] what James calls the royal law,[3] is essentially about bearing one another’s burdens.
All of us, not just the terminally ill, need to know that we are valued and loved as we are; that when we are genuinely in need, for whatever reason, it is OK to be a burden. We need to know that others are committed first and foremost to our wellbeing, even if this does involve expenditure of time, money and emotional energy. And we also need to be ready and willing to carry the burdens of others, even when we are feeling most burdened ourselves. ‘Burdensomeness’ is mutual, and is meant to be. The way we treat others when they are most vulnerable, and in turn allow ourselves to be treated when we are needy, speaks volumes about the kind of people we are; and is ultimately what should mark us out as disciples of Christ.
Peter Saunders
CMF General Secretary
