A recent article highlighted discussions occurring in Australia about euthanasia/voluntary assisted dying (VAD) for people with dementia.
Even where people agree with VAD, they generally acknowledge that people with dementia very often lack the capacity to consent to medically assisted deaths.
However, others rely on advance directives to justify the deaths of dementia sufferers. They would do well to recall the case of a Dutch woman who had signed one such directive.
Despite the woman repeatedly saying she did not want to die, doctors decided she should be euthanised.
The doctor even administered a soporific through her coffee to induce drowsiness. As the doctor administered the lethal injection, she struggled so much that he asked her family to hold her down so that he could complete the injection.
People who promote VAD usually do so for the best of intentions, and they will claim that it should be restricted to people who are: terminally ill, in unbearable pain, are competent adults, and who freely consent to their deaths.
However, as the above case highlights, the concrete reality is often very different.
Belgium and the Netherlands have seen increasing cases of children as young as 9 and 11 being killed through euthanasia. There are many, at least 1,000 cases a year, of patients having their deaths hastened without consent.
It is also reported that, in that part of the world, euthanasia is increasingly being practiced on people with: psychiatric illness, autistic, addiction, or have suffered sexual abuse.
Normally one would caution against “slippery slope” arguments because they rely on predictions that may or may not come true. But in the case of euthanasia, the slippery slope is a reality and it is the argument.
Paid to Choose Voluntary Death
When money is involved, the hard realities of euthanasia become much worse.The U.S. state of Oregon legislated in favour of euthanasia in 1997 and other American states followed. While euthanasia was presented as an option for competent adults, it has become perhaps less optional.
One case is that of Stephanie Packer.
Suffering from chronic autoimmune disease, her doctors suggested she switch to a different chemotherapy drug. Her insurance company refused to pay for such an expensive drug, but did say that it would pay for euthanasia, with a co-payment of $1.20.
There are similar cases around the United States.
A Nevada physician complained of multiple cases in which insurance companies refused to cover expensive life-saving treatments for patients, but instead offered to help them with euthanasia.
What is shocking is that these were not terminally ill patients. They were patients who would survive with treatment.
What Kind of Society Do We Want to Be?
Does opposition to euthanasia/VAD mean condemning people to unbearable suffering?After years of consulting with experts in palliative care, I have been assured consistently that it would be most unusual that reasonable pain relief was not possible.
The reality is that good palliative care works. However, most acute care hospitals do not have the expertise to provide this. Governments and insurance companies may be reluctant to invest the resources to ensure that people live with care and dignity.
Certainly, an example of that arose in Western Australia when VAD was before the state parliament in 2019.
The government proposed that it could provide a team of six expert personnel to travel to remote communities to administer euthanasia. But the government would not commit to providing appropriate palliative care.
The care is expensive, but when it’s done well—where staff treat people—not symptoms, where they take the time to get to know and monitor patients, and where they can customise treatments, instead of an end of loneliness and suffering, people experience an environment where they are valued.
Unfortunately, arguments about euthanasia and related issues like abortion, only remain at the surface—dealing with the problems as they arise.
At a deeper level, the debate is about culture.
Pope John Paul II diagnosed this reality when he highlighted the difference between a “culture of life” and “culture of death.”
The question for us is whether ours is a culture that chooses life or death, and goes to the very foundation of who we are as a society.
