Gentle Into That Dark Goodnight

I see that both Julia and Dioclese are discussing the matter of assisted dying. Given the recent death of Debbie Purdey, someone was going to and I was resisting, but I can’t, so…

I have always admired and supported Purdey in her campaign for the right to end her life at a time of her choosing. This debate strikes at the very heart of liberalism – do we or do we not have dominion over the very thing that we are; our lives. Those who argue that the state should, in some way prevent us from making this decision have decided that the state should have that dominion, not us. The usual canards abound –  one trying to liken it to the debate on abortion.

Nope, not even closely alike. This is about an individual making a decision for themselves, not someone else. And, of course, the old bumping granny off for the inheritance fallacy. Oh, sure, there are those who would like a relative to shuffle off the mortal coil sooner rather than later,  but to commit murder to do it is confined to a very few – and those very few will doubtless be planning it already.  To put forward this excuse for the status quo displays a misanthropic mistrust of humanity as the vast majority of us would like granny to be around for as  long as possible. As I said there, it is not beyond the wit of man to build in safeguards to deter such behaviour and the tiny risk does not justify forcing people to suffer to the bitter end.

Debbie Purdey starved herself to death because the system wouldn’t allow a prescription of barbiturates that she could have taken at a time of her choosing with her husband by her side. The system is inhumane. We wouldn’t let an animal suffer in the way that Purdey was made to suffer. We make a decision about quality of life on behalf of animals, yet refuse to allow an individual to make the same decision for themselves. That, frankly, is not only inhumane, it is sickeningly misanthropic and underpins the authoritarianism that is so deeply rooted  in our society – a refusal to trust the individual to make considered choices on their own behalf. No, rather, we force them to suffer to the bitter end or take a more messy, painful way out.

Of course we get the religious poking their noses into other people’s lives with the usual bollocks about the sanctity of life and false compassion.

In a strongly worded address that marked a departure for a pope who tends to focus more on social justice issues, Francis denounced what he called the “false sense of compassion” that was used to promote abortion and those who regarded euthanasia as “an act of dignity.”

The Pope can go fuck himself with a cattle prod. There is nothing false about my sense of compassion. I am not the one insisting that people suffer debilitating illness until their last drawn-out, agonised breath because of some magical man in the sky. Debbie Purdey didn’t think that there was any sanctity in feeling sick every time she tried to move her head as she wasted away – nor in the continual pain that MS imposed upon her – she had decided that she no longer wanted to live with it. Any god that thinks this is okay is an immoral and misanthropic god. But, then, we knew this already.

While I find the Dutch model Julia is discussing a bit creepy, the model used in some US states is a sensible way forward. A prescription that the user takes when they decide the time is right. It’s all very well suggesting, as one twat did at Julia’s, that people kill themselves in cars (or jumping in front of trains) but someone else has to clear up the mess. What the terminally ill want is to die quietly with dignity, peacefully with their loved ones around them. You’d have to be pretty hard-hearted to want to deny them that. Many, it seems, are.