WIM Blog

Euthanasia is not a ‘good death’.

I am opposed to 'euthanasia' for a number of reasons.

1.  To say 'yes' to euthanasia, as we are being asked to by the Greens, is to vote to change a fundamental principle of our society.  We are a society that acts to save life not to take life. Hospitals, doctors, ambulance services, rehabilitation and mental health services, police and even jails exist to save lives. 

Currently, we do whatever needs to be done to save people, irrespective of the cost.  We seek to help people who, in their distress, try to suicide.  We don't just stand by and watch a person throw herself over a cliff or put a gun to his head or o/d on pills.  We rush drug addicts who overdose to hospitals.  We rescue people lost in the bush. We are a society that rescues and that saves.  This is who we are and how we have always been.  Life is precious.

2. Even though some of us may be supporters of the Darwinian theory of "the survival of the fittest", as a society, we have never before thought of moving to implement this thesis as far as human beings are concerned. Yet 'euthanasia' will carry us down that path.  There will always be someone of whom it can be said, 'It would be better if she died.' And in a society that supports such a policy, people will indeed be helped to die.

As a society we have always been one that values life and that does everything we can to save life.  This is who we are. 

But now we are being asked to become a society that enables some people to die.  We are on the edge of a profound change that, if made, will be a change for our society forever.

But why now?  Why is there such a strong push to legalise euthanasia?  Is it because we, the 'watchers', don't like seeing the processes of death played out? Because the decline of a very loved person is too agonising for us to watch?  Is it because of our own sensitivity and pain that we want the dying process cut short for others?  Or is it because as a nation we are transfixed by the news that the health budget will become impossible as the 'baby boomers' reach old age?  Or perhaps it is because we no longer know how to deal with having our elderly relatives die in our homes? Or is it that alzheimers disease may rob the one we love of her identity or of his personhood, that we want a solution that is surely 'better' than that’?

No one wants to see the ones we love reduced to a confused existence by Alzheimer's or in extreme pain as cancer reduces life to a bedridden drugged existence.

However, much of the case being made seems to be about our own pain, is it as 'the watchers standing by', that we are being enticed to think about 'euthanasia' as a good thing, as a good death?  Yes we are a very self centred generation aren't we. Life is truely all about me, it isn't really about Mum or Dad or Grandpa....it's about me and what I think is a good way forward for the already dying.

Yet perhaps we would not want that decision made for us, were  we to find ourselves in a similar situation in the future....that someone besides me could make the decision to end my life without my agreement...how would I feel about that? Would I see it then as a good death? 

3. Two myths to debunk
Those who argue for euthanasia sometimes point out that we already practise it.  That we already bring about death with the pain control drugs that are used. But this does not equate with deliberately legislating to take away life. The goal is to mitigate pain, death has come as a consequence of that treatment.  The goal hasn't been to bring about death.

Voluntary euthanasia is also a myth.  Euthanasia occurs because someone makes a decision, most often the doctors or relatives of the person, very rarely is it a decision of the patient.  Do we want to give that right to people who may be either in their own distress not be able to think clearly or, who may have their own motives for bringing that life to an end.  Or we may wish the Doctor to make the decision for us.  This raises all the issues of the conflict that this would put medical professionals in - their commitment is to saving life not to enabling death.


4. If euthanasia is legalised the goal may become to save those lives that are worth saving.  Who makes that assessment and how is that assessment to be made?  What man or woman has the wisdom for this?  How would we protect those vulnerable members of our society?  Those who may have a disability of some kind - who will be their protectors in a society that has made euthanasia the default position for people who may need full time care or for those whose functioning is seriously compromised by a disability? 

We are being asked by the pro-euthanasia lobby to take a step too far, to allow some people to become the arbiters of life or death for others.

For we who are Christians, it is God alone who has the right to determine the time of a person's death.

Further information:
www.sydneyanglicans.net and log on to the social issues committtee in the drop down directory and if you ‘google’ Dr. Megan Best you will find great additional information on this question.