A brave new world of euthanasia?

Thursday, May 2nd, 2019

The proposed End Of Life Choice Bill has elicited story upon story.

Stories of death and dying, done both well and badly; stories of hope, fear, anger, and beauty.

And cutting through the emotion have been key words: Choice, compassion, dignity, safety. Good words; aspirational words. Like a panacea, whose meaning is self-evident, these words have been used to distil the conversation; to simplify the messiness, towards – some say – a brave new world of euthanasia deaths.

But these words hold their own messiness.

We must dig in behind these words to see their complexities, their nuances.

We tell our own stories through these words, stories that vary greatly in theory and practice.

When we hear words such as choice, compassion, and dignity, what is the actual story we are each telling about the world?

How will it look, when we continue to live out of that particular story of how we live and die together?

The desire to have the choice to access euthanasia, for example, is central to many people’s support for the Bill: ‘my body, my choice’.

And there is usually the assertion that such a choice would be a private matter – surely, someone’s personal decision to die by euthanasia on a drizzly morning in August doesn’t affect you, personally?

And if one objects on principle, one can opt not to exercise their choice, yes?

That is a story of autonomy and the exercise of individual rights, undertaken privately.

But it is also an impossible story.

The idea that one’s personal choice in this issue has no bearing on others is a misconception.

The very existence of the choice – the legal provision of the possibility of euthanasia – would profoundly change many things.

Medical practitioners would have the right to discuss it as an option.
Family members would be able to suggest it.
And individuals who decided to access it would involve at least two other people.

You may decide that you accept the familial, medical, legal, and social implications of this. But let’s not pretend that these implications are not there. Because another story at play here says these inter-relational consequences are far too serious to countenance.

We are, for better or for worse, in this together.

This oversimplification of such words is common in the public discourse around the EOLC Bill.

I once heard on RNZ’s The Panel a plaintive cry for immediate change – ‘It’s GOT to happen.

Why does this have to be so hard?’.

Usually borne out of compassion, and a bewilderment that we can’t just eliminate suffering, this is understandable but naive.

There is nothing simple when we are contemplating the intentional taking of human life, the last bastion within legal, ethical, and medical boundaries.

The conversation involves the nature of suffering, and its responsible alleviation; our relationships with one another, and ourselves; even personhood itself.

The stories that we tell will vary; but let’s not patronise this conversation with assumed simplicity.

Such discussion becomes even more complex and emotional around the question of compassion.

Why, after all, should we not liberate people from their unnecessary suffering, when things are terminal?

Wouldn’t you do the same for your dog? Continue reading