by Kevin O'Neill, LLB, MSc

Appeal

Opponents of Lord Joffe's attempt to use the force of the law to coerce Britons into killing, or assisting in the killing of, our neighbours have until Friday 3rd September 2004 to have their submissions accepted by the House of Lords Select Committee established to report on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill. This is an urgent appeal to readers to safeguard our moral principle of charity. (Postal and email addresses for submissions are available from the above Select Committee link.)

The text of the Bill may be read here, though the following are some pointers to getting past the euphemistic language in which it has been phrased:

1. The “safeguards” in the Bill, designed as they appear to be to allay fears of the patient's consent being procured through coercion, are in themselves an implicit admission of the corruption that can and does occur when the power to extinguish a person's life is put in the hands of his fellow human being.

Such corruption, however, is not avoided by establishing an “arm's length” relationship between the patient and his killer. The last century demonstrated with abominable clarity that philosophy or ideology can be far more potent motives for taking a person's life than mere financial gain. Furthermore, we are all thoroughly familiar with ideologies which seek to “purify” mankind by eliminating the weak and the “unsightly”.

2. A frequent device employed by elitist killers is to hide behind the victim's “consent”. Indeed, the vocabulary of “consent” would appear to be the only “justification” for the measure contained in this Bill. Yet consent as a moral guide can be misapplied when it conflicts with a graver concern for the welfare of the individual. Hence our common law does not allow a person to consent to his own grievous assault.

As well as coercion, consent can also be vitiated by other factors such as duress or fraud. Again, the twentieth century showed us that fraud can be committed on a massive scale, particularly through the technique of political propaganda. The ideological fraud in which this Bill participates is the concept that some lives are less worthy of living than others. This is made manifest by the requirement, under the section 1 definition of “terminal illness”, that the patient be within months of dying anyway. Whence, then, the necessity for this Bill, which admits the existence in our modern society of palliative care, unless from the desire to force the ideology of extreme liberalism on medical personnel and the public at large? That such a grave imposition is contained in this Bill is clear from the risible lip service paid to conscientious objection in section 7, which still compels the objector to assist in the killing of the patient.

3. Through the blatant use of emotionally toned language (the word “unbearable” assumes its own truth, as if to say, “suffering enough to warrant the patient's being killed under this statute”), this Bill seeks to force extreme liberalism not just on medical practitioners, but on our society as a whole. When we become sick we do not cease to be our brother's keeper. To incriminate another person in the act of suicide is to create a moral scandal among the population which causes other sick people to fear for their own lives, because they see that a public statement has been made that the preservation of their lives until natural death is not the absolute social principle it is when, say, a healthy person stands on a window ledge threatening to jump off.

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