One of my first tasks after moving to Australia in the early ‘90s was to speak to the South Australian parliament about euthanasia.
It seemed a remote possibility then and the case against it was – and is – unanswerable.
In 1997, the Commonwealth overthrew the Northern Territory’s euthanasia legislation after patient work by Kevin Andrews, Church leaders and many non-Christians too. Now, however, euthanasia is permitted in every state. What a mess.
I’ve met no euthanasia supporter who has wicked, malicious motivation. The motivation is compassion (or despair or fear) over suffering, and it’s most usually connected with a personal story. This makes euthanasia a genuinely moral issue.
Moral issues start with compassion – but it’s not how they finish. Or it shouldn’t be. We are thinking creatures and particularly when we are filled with fear or love or despair or rage (and ideally, before these feelings happen) we need to stop, think and work through what acting on our feelings of compassion would actually mean.
I don’t want to rehearse the anti-euthanasia arguments. They’re well-known. They’re unanswerable – and yet people don’t care about that. I’ll say a couple of brief things.
Compassion is what love looks like in the presence of suffering. People with no compassion might be sociopathic or at least lack empathy – the ability to put yourself in others’ shoes.
When we are moved or very stirred up by compassion, we just want to act. But stopping to think about what you’re feeling doesn’t deny your compassion – it’s actually the normal moral pathway for an adult.
A bit of thought about lethal compassion shows that you would be denying the key marker of equality for centuries – the equal and absolute preciousness of every human life: ‘in sickness and in health, richer and poorer…’ You would be denying the basis of the many religions and traditions that have built up our social covenant of equality and respect, particularly in the hard times. You would be redesigning the purposes of healthcare and the freedoms of healthcare professionals.
The thinking matters here.
A bit more thinking and reading might next show us that what’s valuable about ‘autonomy’ isn’t just being free but being free to serve a vision of what’s true and good –and that opens up many questions about what we value beyond personal freedom. What really goes into our vision of truth and goodness?
As the thinking continues, we reach ‘dignity’.
Dignity’s meaning was hammered out centuries ago. It means value-beyond-price, the unique value people alone possess and can never lose. So, even when you’re not sensing your own dignity or when you’re feeling rather undignified – your dignity is still there, intact.
Now, that’s not an argument against euthanasia. But before you build a fishing boat, a drystane dyke or an argument, you must first gather your tools. And for arguments, your tools are tricky ideas or concepts. And that takes some thinking.
I was in an Uber last week driving past Parliament House. I saw four people in heavy rain praying together with a sign appealing for an end to abortion. Standing quietly in front of a calamity and praying to God – and people – to stop and think about it. What heroism.
PS if you don’t know what a drystane dyke is, look it up!
