Whose life is it anyway?
In the last few years, I have seen three people close to me die after fighting cancer. Two of those people died in their own time, one after a short illness, the other after a much longer fight of several years. The third fought for over 18 months in one of the bravest and least self-pitying manners I have ever seen, against an inoperable tumour that eventually overpowered her. One of those people asked others near the end to help them die sooner and without pain; the other two did not want that.
I also know three people with chronic life-limiting and severely debilitating disabilities. All three are cheerful and get on with their lives. One has expressed an opinion that if thisngs became too bad, they would like the power to be able to safely and quietly end their life at a time of their choosing.
Today the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, is publishing his guidelines as to when someone may be prosecuted for helping a loved one to die. He is exoected to draw a clear distiction between what he calls ‘assisted suicide’, where someone helps another who does not have the ability to do so to kill themselves, and ‘mercy killing’ where the active wish comes from the person carrying out the killing. This distinguishes between the cases of Frances Inglis, who injected her brain-damaged son with heroin, and Kay Gilderdale, who helped her severely disabled daughter to die.
The guidelines would mean that where the victim had a “clear, settled, informed wish” to commit suicide and was physically unable to undertake the act him or herself, then a spouse, partner, close relative or friend could assist them. However if there was no such clear wish and the victim was physically able to undertake the act him or herself, or the suspect was employed by a care home, then prosecution would be likely.
It has always seemed clear to me that, however tragic and regrettable it may be, a person who is in their right mind should always have the right to take their own life. I do not subscribe to the view that everyone who wishes to take their own life must automatically be of unsound mind. Whilst many people become suicidal through mental illness and should be given every help to become well, others with terminal or severely disabling illnesses are quite clearly thinking through the situation that they are in and the way that they want to live their life.
One such person is Debbie Purdy, whose legal fight has forced the DPP to bring forward these guidelines. Debbie, who has multiple sclerosis, wants her husband to be free from the threat of prosecution should he help her end her life at a time of her choosing. Earlier this week, Ms Purdy criticised Gordon Brown for his opposition to allowing her and others the comfort of knowing that they could take the biggest decision of their lives, safe in the knowledge that there would be no criminal comeback on their loved ones. This caused the Telegraph’s Religion Editor, Revd George Pitcher, to launch an astonishing attack on her.
“Miss Purdy. It’s you that has shown huge disrespect to all Multiple Sclerosis sufferers by suggesting, whether you wanted to or not, that MS is a terminal disease from which sufferers can be expected to want to escape by killing themselves. It is you who have been manipulated by the pro-suicide lobby to make the sick, the disabled and the elderly even more vulnerable to the despair of suicide, at the end of lives whose infinite variety and value need affirming, not terminating.
“You will have supposed, Miss Purdy, that this exercise was simply about your choice of death. But it will affect the deaths of countless others, whose deaths will be cheapened and hastened by what the DPP offers tomorrow. And you, like the rest of us, will have to live with that.”
Of course Debbie Purdy has not suggested that all MS sufferers should or do want to kill themselves. She is not looking to force her ‘solution’ onto others; rather she is looking for choice to be available. But George Pitcher is suggesting that she, and others in her situation, should be forced to live – and die - by his rules, to make him feel better about the society we live in and to support the religion in which he ministers.
I can barely conceive of a situation in which I would want to prematurely end my life, still less have the courage to do it. I cannot contemplate my husband, mother or daughter being in such a situation, nor my helping them fulfil their wish. But I know that if my loved ones wanted to ease their way peacefully from their life, however much I would try to dissuade them, to spend just another hour, day or week with them, it should be their choice. Not mine, and certainly not the state’s.
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Comments
26 February 2010, 4:23 pm
Well said. This is a horrible subject that none of us want to confront, Debbie Purdy and have family have been forced to do so and have come to the conclusion that most of us have, that a person’s life is their own and that they should have the right to choose when their suffering outweighs the benefit of living.
George Pitcher is fortunate enough not to have to face this choice, his comments about Ms Purdy are truely beyond belief, this brave woman is spending her precious final days fighting for freedom of choice for everyone who may one day find themselves in that position while he (edited to be more civil than my initial phrasing) gets paid by the Telegraph to snipe from the sidelines. There are good arguments for both sides in this debate, although I feel the argument of personal choice is the most compelling, Pitcher doesn’t bother with anything so tedious and instead just goes straight for a personal attack on grounds of lack of respect and supposed manipulation by a ‘pro euthanasia lobby’.
I’m truely disgusted.