In a Thin Place
The veil drawn aside in the aftermath of the Assisted Dying Bills.
I began taking notes for this article on the night that the Scottish Parliament voted on the Assisted Dying Bill which was introduced by Scottish Liberal Democrat Liam McArthur; thankfully it failed to win the majority vote. It was a close call, and every argument I heard for or against was very vague and didn’t seem to ever get to the very guts of the issue. I couldn’t put my finger on why, waiting for the result of the vote, this felt like a watershed moment; the dreadful realisation that our United Kingdom was built by people with a much firmer grasp on ethics and truth than those drafting bills now. So, I began to think about these concepts that kept being plated up, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’, ‘dignity’ as if they’re self explanatory concepts. Well, to believe that they are self explanatory is to presume a moral foundation and I cannot see that any argument in favour of assisted dying can be resting on one. My fear is that this Bill should it pass at a later date, is the fruit of a long and slow degradation of truth and the abdication from natural law to moral relativism, and I fail to see how a coherent system of law can function on this basis.
“If God does not exist then everything is permitted.” – Dostoyevsky
The idea of a fundamental human right to life rests on the belief that human beings are uniquely made in the image of God and therefore have inherent dignity. We know that we are set apart from the animal kingdom because of two things: speech and reason. But these things don’t necessarily earn us ‘rights’, if we needed to earn our human rights, they would no longer be inalienable. Why should we have inalienable rights regardless of committing a heinous crime for example? Well, the assumption is that we are all equal in the eyes of God and despite our sins, Christ’s mercy is not limited nor prejudiced. If humanity creates it’s own rights, then they can be revised or removed according to, say, a vote.
So this brings us to ‘autonomy’, the right to refuse your inalienable right? Whether an individual wishes to refuse a human right or not, it cannot be acknowledged in law because the virtue of ‘justice’ involves the whole, not just the individual. The concept of autonomy in this instance is flawed since it is very conditional in that it requires others to partake in the suicide by making an assessment on eligibility and prescribing or administering the deadly drug. A patient must also be able to give consent to be eligible. This raises several questions: how does a physician measure suffering and how can it be legislated? If only those who are competent enough to consent are allowed to commit suicide, then surely this limits who actually has autonomy. The often discussed point of ‘compassion for suffering’ then becomes conditional also, how and why should compassion only be shown for those competent enough to consent? Suffering is surely a subjective experience and to deny a person’s reality could be considered prejudiced. If this question cannot be answered with empirical evidence now, then it will be answered if an assisted dying bill passes at a later date, and no doubt these points will be met with agreement.
In CS Lewis’s ‘The Problem of Pain’ he makes the point that kindness is not love, kindness is disinterested tolerance. Love expects much more, loving thy neighbour is not putting down a sick animal. If as a society, we legally accept that some lives are not worth living, it is inevitable that the group will expand from terminally ill adults who can physically consent, to those who cannot consent, to terminally ill children, to the elderly, depressed, disabled, poor. (This also begs the question, why not the death penalty? Is it only the innocent that can be killed by the State?) These are not medical assessments, they are philosophical and legal questions. To give powers to the State to legally take the lives of innocent people is a risk that tenuously hopes that a government will always remain politically sensible and never fall into tyranny. The ‘right to die’ is the removal of a human right, not the addition of one.
“The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.” – George MacDonald
First of all, dignity is not bestowed on a person by the State, it is inherent in the human being. Secondly, as a Catholic whose God suffered for the sins of humanity, I cannot rightly agree that to suffer is to lack dignity. We can not also agree that all who suffer would be better off dead, whether they are suffering due to illness or in war zones or due to poverty. We have seen these arguments in the dialogue around abortion, if the existence of life itself is not outright denied, then the argument often switches to the circumstances of the mother. I think an unforeseen element of the cultural repercussions will be that it will become morally reprehensible to be ‘against suicide’ in a similar way to abortion, to talk someone out of the idea of suicide will be considered taboo, and perhaps we will see those talking to potential suicides or quietly praying for them arrested as with the case of the director March for Life (UK) arrested for silent prayer. The intrinsic value of a person’s life is not diminished by their experience of suffering, on the contrary many who suffer find purpose in ways that are unique to their experience and in helping others.
In the same way that the pharmaceutical industry depends on illness to make profits, it’s undeniable that assisted suicide is vulnerable to becoming a lucrative business, especially if outsourced to third parties. Organ harvesting could also easily fall into a moral black hole, if pressure is placed on potential donors and even due to the problem of ‘ischemia time’ whereby organs are damaged during the time that the donor dies and the organs lack blood flow before transplantation; how long will it take before donors who choose assisted suicide are having their organs removed alive? The UN reported that “the organ trade, which includes human trafficking for organ removal, is a lucrative criminal business, amounting to between 840 million to USD 1.7 billion USD annually.” If this trade is legalised with a fresh source of transplants and supported through official routes, I cannot see that the industry, already on morally flimsy ground, can retain watertight safeguards. The risk of cutting corners on psychological as well as social and welfare assessments to ensure individuals are not being manipulated by families and the temptation of financial incentives just looks like a march toward continued dehumanisation in an increasingly atomised world. If dignity and rights are not considered intrinsic to the human person, but rather given by the State, then they can be withheld, taken or outright denied with enough social conditioning.
“Without a theory of Immortality it leaves no room for the value of death” – CS Lewis
I cannot presume to know what it’s like to suffer with a terminal illness, the pleas for compassion from the assisted suicide lobby seem to stress the suffering of physical pain but really I think it is more about the psychological pain and more so even than that, a spiritual pain. The grief of being unable to live a normal life. Where medication can in most cases be used to alleviate physical pain, the spiritual suffering comes down to grappling with the rawness of the unique human experience itself. I think that is why the assisted dying debate generates such contention. Pope John Paul II articulated this unavoidable aspect of life perfectly:
“...what we express by the word “suffering” seems to be particularly essential to the nature of man. It is as deep as man himself, precisely because it manifests in its own way that depth which is proper to man, and in its own way surpasses it. Suffering seems to belong to man’s transcendence: it is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense “destined” to go beyond himself, and he is called to this in a mysterious way.”
Pope John Paul II goes on to say that humans are uniquely aware of our suffering and that an individual suffers greatly when he is deprived, according to the normal order of things, of what is ‘good’. It might seem extraneous to the debate, but I actually think the questions of good and evil are precisely what needs discussing, a ‘returning to the drawing board’. We instinctively perceive what is ‘good’ and according to the Church our awareness comes from God so that we are able to know ourselves and God, to witness and respond to the world. To reference CS Lewis again, we know right and wrong because ‘all men are conscious of guilt’, therefore guilt is either an ‘inexplicable illusion or else revelation.’
If what sets us apart defines us, i.e. communication and awareness, then to know and communicate the Good, the True and the Beautiful (the Transcendentals) and gain knowledge is to know God and find purpose. Aristotle says that happiness is not a state of being but is the acquisition of outstanding natural activity, aiming at ‘some good’ with every choice. So, the theft of self determination can be viscerally painful, especially in the West where this freedom is enjoyed by the majority.
In November of last year, the funeral Mass of Br Aidan John was held at Pluscarden Abbey. Br John took his monastic vows as he was dying of Cancer at 38. Some of the monks spoke of the beautiful and edifying experience of visiting Br John and offering Mass at his bedside before he passed. In the homily read at the funeral, Br John’s own words were shared where he reflects on his life’s purpose and failings and ultimately the gratitude he felt and the hope that his last days gave everyone around him; Br John’s vivid example of what suffering can even, perhaps, offer us, of which the truest of introspection is one:
“I spoke to Br. Peter yesterday and he mentioned again his trip to Iona and the idea of its being a thin place, where the boundary between heaven and earth is particularly narrow, and that death does something similar. What a beautiful thought, that the dying person is a thin place where the veil is drawn aside and heaven becomes close to all who approach! I see this now as my mission: to be a thin place where those around me, whether family, friends, carers or strangers, can see through the burden of illness to the beauty and joy of heaven, can see through the trials of this earthly human life to the glory of God and his unfailing, abundant love.”
By Lucy Fraser