It says a lot about the opinion-forming classes that pretty much the only right they get excited about these days is the “right to die”. They treat the right to free speech as a negotiable commodity which may be snatched away from un-PC people. They have given the nod to the watering down of other essential rights, such as the right to trial by jury and the right to silence. But the “right to die”? They cleave to that like crazy. It is the one right which, if you will forgive the pun, they would die for.
Today, MPs are debating new guidelines proposed by the Director of Public Prosecutions on who should and should not be prosecuted for assisting a suicide. There is a palpable desire in influential circles for assisted suicide to become a legally recognised, legitimate thing, in order to move on from the current situation where desperately ill people must travel to Switzerland in order to receive a fatal injection. Commentators argue that a humane society should never force a very sick or disabled person who wants out to carry on living.
There is an element of truth in this. But there is a big problem with elevating what is in fact an age-old practice – helping extremely sick people to end their lives – into a “right” which we should all enjoy. Which is that it would treat individual and tragic acts of death-assistance as some sort of social good; it would turn the discreet and humane “final push”, which has been taking place in hospitals and homes for centuries, into a socially decreed, positive act. It would, in effect, give a green light to defeatism, to suicidal thoughts, and that is not something society should ever do. Continue reading
Sources
- Brendan O’Neill in The Telegraph
- Image: MacDoctor