Those Hating Wisdom, Love Death

Prothanasia Arguments Cannot Be Limited To One Class of People

A euthanasia debate is now underway in New Zealand.  Parliament is now considering a bill which would make the practice lawful.  

In writing about "euthanasia" we can't help but feel the lily has already been gilded.  The word is derived from Greek.  "Thanatos" means death; "eu" is an adverb meaning "good".  Thus, euthanasia means, literally "good death".  Since we believe that there is nothing good about the deliberate killing of another human being, we propose a new word would serve us much better.  Instead of "euthanasia" we will refer to "prothanasia", which literally means "for death", or "in favour of death".

Philip Matthews summarises what the new Bill intends:

The details may change but the bill presently would allow for a New Zealand citizen or resident over 18, who is suffering from a terminal illness that is expected to end their life within 6 months or has a grievous and untreatable medical condition, to opt for an assisted death. There are safeguards of informed consent and assessment by two doctors.  The pro-euthanasia camps argue that civilised countries like ours at this point in history should allow for death without suffering, a painless option. You hear a lot about the dignity of the dying.  [Stuff]

One of the strong advocates for the prothanasia is Maryanne Street.  She quickly exposes the Achilles heel of the position:

 She believes that two things underpin both the assisted dying bill and disability charters, and they are maximum autonomy and dignity. Just as disability rights activists want to enshrine those qualities, so too does the pro-euthanasia camp.

The case for prothanasia rests upon human dignity and autonomy.  People have rights.  Allowing people to make their own choices is inextricably bound in with their dignity as human beings.  That is why prothanasia can never stop at the wilful death of terminally ill patients.  If maximum autonomy and dignity is to mean terminally ill patients can choose to die, so too, with equal moral and ethical force must non-terminally ill human beings be accorded the same autonomy and dignity.  If not, the prothanasia argument is inextricably riddled with hypocrisy, inconsistency, special pleading, and injustice.  It must advocate human rights for some, and not for others.

It is thus understandable that prothanasia regimes such as the Netherlands and Belgium have steadily expanded the application of the right to die, well beyond the terminally ill.  In those countries it is now applicable to anyone who believes they have "had enough" of living.

The slippery slope argument is harder to combat, though. What happens if we keep normalising the right to die or keep expanding the parameters? How far does liberalism take us? Australian ethicist Xavier Symons made this point recently when euthanasia was debated and made legal in the state of Victoria. In the Netherlands, Symons noted, euthanasia deaths have trebled since 2002, and are now more than 4 per cent of all deaths, with increasing requests from people who are not terminally ill but simply "tired of life".  There is something very sad about this trend: boredom, illness and loneliness in the most prosperous societies in history, where some would rather be dead and no longer a burden.

How about the right of children to die? That would seem grotesque to many of us. But the Netherlands allows assisted dying for those over 12 and Belgium has had no age limit since 2014.  The first Belgian minor to be legally euthanised was a terminally ill 17 year old in 2016.

When confronted with this grim reality, the New Zealand prothanasia advocates deny that is what they are seeking.  But this is either a "head-in-the-sand" response, or it is deliberately deceptive and misleading.  If the prothanasia argument is to be granted credence in the first place, it must be applied  to all human beings.  If it cannot be so applied--for whatever reason or argument--it is equally inapplicable and irrelevant to terminally ill old folk.

In the end, we are all terminally ill.  If a twenty-five year old does not have a human right to be helped to die (despite the depths of his depression or grief), nor does a fifty year old--nor does a how-ever-many-years-old human being.