New Human Rights Discovered

Giving Death Its Due

Well, we are really starting to cook with gas now.  The European Court of Human Rights has decided to rule on the matter of assisted suicide.  How come?

This judgment rests on the notion that suicide has acquired the quality of an individual right or freedom (§ 66), and so a deontological norm cannot impede its exercise: it is for the law to regulate, even if it is realised through the art of medicine.

In other words, since suicide is a human right, the state and the courts had better ensure that folk get to do it.  Failure to do so, to impede them, would be a breach of human rights.  Sickness, illness, physical decrepitude (a kind of deontological norm) has nothing to do with it.   Don't you just love that phrase: "deontological norm" to describe a rule, such as human affliction which is undermining quality of life.  Such afflictions, which are usually offered as justifying a person killing themselves, are irrelevant.  Killing oneself is a human right, a human freedom, you see. 

Now we perceive great benefits to come from this.
  Firstly, we will have to rewrite history.  For example, true prophet, Jim Jones, a man ahead of his time, has been unfairly pilloried by deontolgists everywhere.  Now, however, we get to see him for the noble man he really was.  Jim orchestrated a mass suicide of his followers at Jones Town in Guyana--around 900 people.  It now turns out he was the equivalent of Martin Luther King. He had a dream too--and it was to uphold human rights in a particularly special way.  He was unfairly condemned by the oppressive authorities.  The man was actually helping people exercise their individual rights and human freedom.  What a saint.  What a hero.  So, we need to honour Jim Jones appropriately.  He was a man of our times.  A true saint.  He deserves the Medal of Freeom, posthumously, naturally. 


Secondly, a moment's reflection will show us how useful this new individual right and human freedom will be.  Consider our prisons.  Hitherto, prisoners attempting to take their own lives was frowned upon.  Currently, prison guards who fail to prevent prisoners from "suiciding" are investigated and often disciplined.  Now all that can be done away with.  The fact is, not to allow, or failure to facilitate, a prisoner taking his own life will be a gross violation of his human rights. Every night a "don't wake up" pill should be made available to all prisoners to enable them to exercise their human rights, should they so choose.  It would be cruel and unusual punishment not to provide such care and service.

Then think about how few like to die alone.  Suicide clubs--to be known as Socratic Societies--will doubtless develop.  These are to be greatly encouraged.  Jonestown Kool Aid will be freely available.  The more the merrier. 

Those who believe the world is overpopulated--that is, Greenists and their travelling compaions--will likely applaud this development.  They will push for the suicide pill to be freely available at public expense.  It will be called the "Do Us All a Favour Pill".  It will be particularly focused upon the young, since they are going to do so much more environmental damage than the aged, moving forward. 

Just as the contraception pill has been aggressively promoted to the young as part of sex education, the "Do Us All a Favour Pill" will become part of a concerted government education programme in schools.  It will be presented as a fundamental human right, the highest ethical contribution one can make, a noble act, a sacrifice for others.  The climax of the course will be a call to the altar of human rights, dignity, and freedom.  Pupils will be invited to come up to the front of the class and consume the pill on mass, accompanied by soporific music, followed by a triumphant rendering of the Ode to Joy. The dead will be publicly acknowledged in the next Queen's Birthday honours list.

Oh, what a lovely world.  Behold the glory of secular humanism.