The Proposed Assisted Suicide / Euthanasia Bill

Abstract

The Proposed Assisted Suicide / Euthanasia Bill1 D Vincent Twomey SVD The proposed Dying with Dignity Bill currently under discussion in Dáil Éireann aims to address the human/ethical dilemma posed (1) by those with an incurable illness that is the immediate cause of such intense suffering that those affected want to end their pain by ending their lives and (2) by medical personnel who, moved by compassion for the suffering of the patient but unable to do anything to relieve their pain despite advances in palliative care and pain-suppressing drugs, are requested by the patient, or are so upset by the patient’s evident agony, that they are tempted to accede to the patient’s plea to end their pain. Before examining the bill, it is worth recalling the radical change of attitude to assisted suicide/euthanasia that has taken place since the end of the Second World War. The Nazi regime in Germany, justifying its actions on the basis of the then-acceptable ‘scientific’ theory of eugenics, practised widespread euthanasia to get rid of those, such as the disabled, whose lives were considered, as they put it ‘not worth living’.2 The next step was the death camps. After the Nuremburg trials of Nazi criminals (including doctors), euthanasia was strictly forbidden. Up to fairly recently, assisted suicide and euthanasia have incurred the full sanction of the law in most countries. In the last few years, moved by compassion for the pain experienced by some terminally ill persons, severely restricted laws were introduced in countries such as Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands to allow some people to take their own lives and to be assisted in so doing. More recently, Germany and Austria have removed the constitutional barriers to permit legislation for both euthanasia and/or physician-assisted suicide. Comparatively swiftly, moved by that same compassion, those laws were broadened to allow any person to take their own lives, should they, at a particular moment in time, feel intensely that they cannot face what seems to them to be a future of intense pain and suffering. Indeed, new-born children with severe physical and other disabilities are euthanised (i.e., killed) ‘to take Studies • volume 110 • number 438 169 them out of their agony’ or spare their parents from facing a life-long care for such a child. The same compassion (aided and abetted by the spiralling costs of caring for an ageing population with special needs at the end of their lives), encourages senior citizens (or even young people with severe disabilities), many of whom don’t want to burden their own families with the costs involved in caring for them, to seek to end their deteriorating physical and psychological condition by assisted suicide. Apparently aware of the significant change of attitudes to assisted suicide and euthanasia in the so-called developed world – a world that is characterised by materialism, prosperity, ‘the good life’, and secularisation (with its inbuilt denial of an afterlife and so seeing no meaning in life that could help people face suffering and loss), the World MedicalAssociation affirmed the following at its 70th General Assembly in Tbilisi, Georgia, in October 2019: ‘The WMA reiterates its strong commitment to the principles of medical ethics and that utmost respect has to be maintained for human life. Therefore, the WMA is firmly opposed to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide’.3 The issues at stake are not medical (though they profoundly affect all healthcare workers), but profoundly human and therefore cultural. They are affected by lifestyle, values, morality (ethics) and, above all, religion. It is significant therefore that representatives of the three monotheistic world religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – met in the Vatican in 2019 to consult on this urgent issue facing humanity today. Their comprehensive joint statement, On Matters Concerning the End of Life, defines a dying patient as ‘a person suffering from a fatal, incurable and irreversible disease, at a stage when death will in all probability occur within the space of a few months as a result of the disease or its directly related complications, despite the best diagnostic and therapeutic efforts’.4 In rejecting euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, they state: ‘Matters pertaining...