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Emergency exit
Is assisting someone
to commit suicide as simple as it sounds?
Could a law permitting such an act cover all
the bases? Or would it be a legal and moral
quagmire?
Neil
Richardson looks at the issues.
On the final day of 2008,
the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown made clear his
total opposition to relaxing the ban on
assisting a person to commit suicide,
suggesting that such a change could force
vulnerable people to end their lives early
if they feared they would become a burden.
He was speaking in the
light of a series of high-profile cases that
have recently increased calls for assisted
dying to be made. Each year, about a hundred
Britons travel to Switzerland, where
assisted suicide is legal.
The Prime Minister said,
“I’m totally against laws on that. I think
this debate about assisted suicide, it’s not
really for us to create any legislation that
would put pressure on people to feel that
they had to offer themselves because they
were causing trouble to a relative. So I
think we have got to make it absolutely
clear that the importance of human life is
recognised.”
The
1961 Suicide Act makes aiding and
abetting suicide punishable by up to 14
years in prison in England and Wales. In
Scotland, people providing assistance could
be prosecuted under common-law rules on
culpable homicide. The comments come
following a decision by the Director of
Public Prosecutions in England not to charge
the parents of Daniel James, who accompanied
their 23-year-old tetraplegic son to the
Dignitas clinic in Zürich to allow him
to die.
Obviously, this is a
sensitive and delicate matter about one
individual’s suffering and desire to end it
all; but the implications for our common
life are clear and the matter sets up huge
questions about the ultimate value of human
life upon which our whole civilisation has
been founded for thousands of years.
Before I say anything
else, I must remember that I have never been
so ill that I felt like committing suicide.
I can’t imagine what that feels like. Yet,
on a personal level, I deeply sympathise
with those in that situation and acknowledge
that their wish to die was genuinely in
order to get relief from pain and from a
sense of helplessness.
For those affected
personally, this personal desire to die is
made impossible to satisfy in Britain
because of the need of practical help from
relatives and professionals with appropriate
expertise. Those who are incapable of
committing suicide need help. Those who do
help face murder charges and could receive a
custodial sentence of up to 14 years.
The issue leapt into
public prominence in 2002 when
Diane Pretty from Luton became the focus
of a debate about the laws of euthanasia in
Britain. She had attempted to change British
law so she could end her own life because of
the pains and problems that she endured as a
result of her terminal
motor neurone disease. She said, “I want
to have a quick death without suffering, at
home surrounded by my family.”
She also expressed a wish
that her husband should be able to assist
her in ending her life, without this being
classed as illegal assisted suicide. Diane
Pretty took her case to court using the
Human Rights Act to argue that the
Director of Public Prosecutions should make
a commitment not to prosecute anybody
involved in helping her to die. British
courts did not accept her application.
No right to
die
The House of Lords,
Britain’s highest court, eventually also
turned her case down. The European Court of
Human Rights refused to acknowledge that the
European Convention on Human Rights provided
a right to die, and her appeal to that court
failed also.
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Prime Minister
Gordon Brown:
“importance of
human life” |
I wasn’t surprised that
the courts refused her case at all levels.
It is quite a simple matter. Wartime
activity excluded (and what a debate awaits
us there!), to put someone to death is
simply wrong, even if that is what they
want. The imperative underlying all our laws
and human conventions insists that human
life is precious and has inviolate
protection against lethal activity.
Anyone who crosses the
boundary and kills has contravened this
deeply held and most valuable pillar of our
culture. No society could permit the
legalisation of merciful killing and still
expect to remain open and free thereafter.
The one case would become a trickle, then a
steady stream and then a flood.
People would be seeking
premature death at the hands of a friend for
all manner of reasons, and we would then
need the paraphernalia of a whole new set of
legal procedures to enable someone to sit in
judgement and decide who would be allowed to
kill with immunity and who would not.
The concept is impossible
to contemplate and would, I am sure, lead to
a whole new range of criminal activity –
basically murder – but contrived through the
system to appear as though these deaths were
consenting mercy killings. The knock-on
effect of legalising euthanasia would be
degrading and dehumanising for every one of
us.
Obviously, suicide is one
way out for some people, but that is a
matter of personal choice – and also of
personal responsibility. It would be quite
wrong for a would-be suicide to ask a friend
or relative to assist, because who knows
what terrible after effects of guilt would
then ensue for the rest of that person’s
life?
And it would be dangerous
for the law to permit a third party to
assist it. One serious side-effect would be
the necessity of creating a whole new
structure of specially trained and
designated medical staff, both doctors and
nurses. The impact of this would be
horrific. There, amid a noble vocation of
restoring people to health and caring for
people with only a short time to live, would
rise a set of dedicated staff, but dedicated
to ending life not saving it.
This would send shockwaves through the whole
health system and eventually reduce the
value of human life in a major way.
Death doctor
Imagine lying in a bed
and having a visit from the doctor. But is
it the life doctor or the death doctor? The
whole situation is untenable both
practically and morally.
In the end, even those
who are dying and in difficult situations
can enjoy life. They can love and be loved.
They can communicate and express themselves
and their views. They can continue in a
variety of human relationships. It may be
more difficult, but life can still be a
whole experience, even for those suffering
like Diane Pretty.
In fact, Diane Pretty is
a perfect example of how purposeful and
effective a life someone with motor neurone
disease can actually live. Even in the
advanced stages of her illness, she was
interviewed on television, travelled to the
courts personally, and was the cause of many
column inches in the press, as well as
sparking off an international debate about
the value of human life. Her life was far
from useless, even just a few days before
her death in May 2002.
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Brian and Diane
Pretty:
they attempted to
change the law |
I am concerned that there
is so much energy put into the issue of
assisted suicide. While I acknowledge that
different points of view are possible on
this subject, I feel that the energy would
be better spent campaigning to improve
healthcare or supporting the hospice
movement, which helps the terminally ill
face their final days in relative comfort
and dignity. Surely this is a much more
noble cause than campaigning to have the
laws changed so people can kill each other.
Let us acknowledge that
there are some very difficult cases that are
heartbreaking. But let us never violate the
sanctity of human life.
Neil
Richardson has been the rector of the
Parish of Greenford Magna
in Middlesex since 1982.
He is also a Prebendary of
St Paul's Cathedral and an Honorary Alderman
of the London Borough of Ealing. He
has been a member of the
Lesbian and
Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) since the
1970s.
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