“Sometimes,” said the White Queen to Alice, “I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
When Charles Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll) spoke of “impossible things” he meant false claims and alleged truths that are at variance with reality.
Firstly, let’s look at a simple example from daily life.
If a shark attacks a swimmer in Australian waters and the authorities talk about catching and killing it, there will be squeals of protest from the sentimentalists of the left-wing progressives and advocates of “animal rights.”
Is this an impossible thing in Carroll’s sense?
Of course, it is, because it’s at variance with reality and common sense: you can buy battered shark to have with your chips at any fish shop in the country.
Let’s cut back now to the big issue.
It is understandable that a sick person in very great pain might hope to die, and might even decline to receive therapies that could prolong life. But it is absurd to pass legislation to allow one person to kill another, even with the latter’s permission.
Absurd? Yes, because lawmakers are human beings and the tightest legal draft inevitably has loopholes and leaves room for interpretation that will have consequences far beyond the original intent.
Legalisation to allow euthanasia in the Netherlands, Canada, and now Australia has resulted in an annual increase in the number of those applying for it and dying by it.
The stretching of the rules to allow more and more “participation”: Just this year, Victoria extended availability to people who were mentally ill.
Sold as a ‘Courageous’ Thing to Do
You don’t have to have much imagination to see that people whose minds are impaired by mental suffering might be particularly susceptible to being persuaded to take a radical course of action when that action is nowadays popularly depicted as humane, generous, and compassionate.Advocates of “assisted dying” are very good at presenting their case with kindness. And they are completely sincere; they have convinced themselves that a good death, at the right time, free from pain and anxiety, is a goal worth gaining.
They are authoritatively giving permission to fragile people to take control of their own deaths, and presenting that option as a decent and even courageous one.
Older people in sound mental health but failing physically are at risk in our jurisdictions, particularly if they have money and property to leave behind. Most children love their parents, but it’s only too human to run out of patience with their frailty.
It’s easy to persuade yourself that it’s in your parent’s best interest to “pass away” (we never say “die” nowadays) while they still have some quality of life, before their remaining strength wanes.
It’s not hard to convince yourself that their well-being is more precious to us than the funds they'll leave behind.
We humans—all of us—are prone to weakness and self-deception.
It’s for this reason that we need laws to keep ourselves in line, to shore up the fabric of the social contract, and to deter ourselves when tempted by wrongdoing.
Anarchy might look like an attractive state to some, but anarchy and morality would be impossible bedfellows.
There’s something else going on here too. Advocates of euthanasia deliberately try to confuse the issue.
It is not, nor ever has been, illegal or immoral to refuse to submit to “unnatural” medical intervention. It is not illegal to ask for or to give painkillers in heroic doses, provided that the intention is to comfort, but not to kill.
If death is the outcome, that is not euthanasia. Euthanasia is active killing.
The Modern Person’s Need to Control His or Her Fate
Why are we seeing such passionate advocacy for euthanasia? English psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple takes this view:“Man feels the need to be in control of everything. That is why the existential limit of life—death—seems an affront to him and must be brought under not merely technical, but bureaucratic control. The very procedure of euthanasia—the forms to fill in, the legal safeguards—gives us the comforting illusion that death is voluntary and that we are, or can be, infinitely Promethean.”
This impulse, this longing to be in control of our own affairs, is very characteristic of modern humanity.
It’s perfectly normal for people to fear sudden or unexpected death—we all dread the sad eyes of the policeman who comes to the door or the ghastly wail of the ambulance.
But modern people hate being passive—we are desperately ambitious to call our own shots. “Assisted dying” is one way we think we can do that.
Another is by deciding for ourselves whether babies will live or die, solely on the basis of their gender or our need for them.
A third way is by fostering the crazy notion that we can, by our own actions, significantly manage the world’s climate.
King Canute, where are you when we need you?
