Assisted suicide: Matthew Parris has said the quiet part out loud

COMMENT

What is the right reaction to pain and suffering: compassionate care, or hard-hearted abandonment? Most of us instinctively know the answer.

In fact, it is the Christian answer to this question that has so shaped our society’s attitude towards the vulnerable. It is why, even with its regrettable gaps, the UK has such praiseworthy palliative care and why there is so much concern to have an effective welfare system.

True compassion

Christians believe that every human being has God-given dignity: not because of our personal prosperity, position or wellbeing but because God breathed life into us. Made in God’s image, we are worthy of respect; whoever we are and whatever position we find ourselves in.

This is a truly compassionate position. It confidently declares that every single one of us has immeasurable value. Ill health does not mean some lives are not worth living. A person’s inability to contribute socially or economically to society does not make them a ‘burden’ that is not worth carrying.

Many have wrongly argued for assisted suicide on a tragically flawed understanding of compassion. ‘We must ease people’s suffering by helping them end their life’, they say. It is a deeply misguided position. Good end-of-life care is widely available and would only be undermined by the cheaper, cruder and far more demeaning provision of medically administered suicide.

More than that, case after case around the world shows the horrific possibilities of dying this way. The notion of ‘quietly slipping away’ is a dubious one. Take the US State of Oregon. Between 2012-2022, more than one-in-ten faced complications, including seizures and waking up after taking the drugs. It is far from uncommon for deaths to take days, rather than minutes as many expect.

‘Get it over with’

Perhaps worse still, the claim that assisted suicide is a ‘compassionate’ approach can also mask a far uglier sentiment. This was laid bare last weekend in an article by veteran journalist Matthew Parris in The Times.

Think about that for a moment. Vulnerable people feeling pressured to ‘get it over with quickly for everyone’s sake’ is “not a bad thing”.

The newspaper summarised the article in the title and subheading: “We can’t afford a taboo on assisted dying: The argument against it is that pressure will grow on the terminally ill to hasten their own deaths – that’s not a bad thing”.

Think about that for a moment. Vulnerable people feeling pressured to ‘get it over with quickly for everyone’s sake’ is “not a bad thing”.

Writing strongly in support of changes to the law, Parris casts fresh light on an attitude that applauds such proposals. It affords a stark glimpse of a mindset that abandons the ‘compassion’ arguments altogether in favour of a position we all instinctively know is wrong.

See first how ‘assisted suicide’ has been rebranded as ‘assisted dying’. This terminology has been adopted by those pressing for a new law because it helps hide the horrifying reality of encouraging people to kill themselves. Our political class has rightly been focused on reducing suicide. This would be turned on its head.

Parris puts his position plainly: “As (objectors say) the practice spreads, social and cultural pressure will grow on the terminally ill to hasten their own deaths so as ‘not to be a burden’ on others or themselves. I believe this will indeed come to pass. And I would welcome it.”

He continues: “Is life still giving us more pleasure than pain? How much is all this costing relatives and the health service? How much of a burden are we placing on those who love us? … It will become common practice to pose this question without embarrassment, and to weigh the answer up.”

This is truly chilling; the ultimate in hopelessness. Could anyone possibly welcome it?

We will all be thankful we have no power over life and death if ‘pleasure versus pain’ is the metric. And is he right to ask: “How much of a burden are we placing on those who love us”? Why not: ‘How much of a burden are we willing to shoulder for those we love’?

To use his own language, Mr Parris shows us the ‘thick end of the wedge’. He has said the quiet part out loud.

It may sound brutal, but I don’t apologise for the reductivist tone in which this column treats human beings as units — in deficit or surplus to the collective. For a society as much as for an individual, self-preservation must shine a harsh beam on to the balance between input and output. To protect its future, a healthy society must adapt its norms, its cultural taboos and its moral codes. Matthew Parris – assisted suicide advocate

Hopelessness

Here is the reality of a law which grants state assistance to vulnerable people who want to commit suicide: abandonment instead of care. Today, if a frail person feels themselves a burden, society says ‘we will carry you’. If they feel life is giving more pain than pleasure, we offer hope, comfort and a little joy. Instead, the assisted suicide narrative is one which devalues people and pressures them to die.

This is exactly what we see in Canada: a soldier with PTSD, a Paralympian struggling to procure a wheelchair ramp, and a woman in unsuitable housing all feeling pressured into ending their lives.

Will politicians adopt Parris’s desperately bleak, utilitarian argument that some lives are simply not worth living and the sooner those people accept that the better for everyone?

At this point most advocates of assisted suicide offer the (unfounded) reassurance that ‘such a thing could never happen here’. Not so for Parris. He knows it could. And celebrates the fact.

Those who spend their lives helping people in their dying days are clear that suicide is not a compassionate answer. In fact, palliative care doctors are overwhelmingly opposed to this approach. In Scotland for example, a recent survey shows that most would refuse to administer lethal drugs for assisted suicide if it were legalised (95%). They believe that the introduction of assisted suicide would adversely impact the care of patients with life-limiting illnesses (86%).

Disturbingly, it is a real possibility that the law could be changed. Scottish Lib Dem MSP Liam McArthur has published a Bill with the aim of seeing assisted suicide legalised in Scotland. In Westminster, there is to be a debate later this month. Jersey and the Isle of Man are pushing ahead with their own changes and an Oireachtas Committee has also advocated removing end-of-life protections in Ireland.

Our politicians will need to decide which sort of ‘compassion’ they will adopt. Will they choose the path of palliative care? Or will they adopt Parris’s desperately bleak, utilitarian argument that some lives are simply not worth living and the sooner those people accept that the better for everyone?