Comment (49)
Email
Print
del.icio.us
TechnoratiDeath talk in a secular age
We must formulate a moral argument against euthanasia without resorting to religion.
There is a trend in western democracies these days of increasing activism to legalize euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. In Canada we have seen a private member's bill (C-562) introduced in April by Bloc Québécois MP Francine Lalonde, which would amend the Criminal Code to allow a physician to "aid a person to die with dignity". So, understanding the arguments both for and against these interventions is of crucial importance. But that is not easy to accomplish, if my own experience holds true more generally.
I teach a course, "Ethics, Law, Science and Society," to upper year and graduate law students at McGill and, at the end of last semester, the topic was euthanasia.
I've researched euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, the ethics and law of palliative care and pain relief treatment, decision-making at the end of life, and related topics, for nearly three decades and published a 433-page book, Death Talk: The case against euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.
Yet, I came away from the class feeling that I had completely failed to communicate to most of my students what the problems with euthanasia were, that I was hitting a steel wall. This was not due to any ill-will on their part; rather, they seemed not to see euthanasia as raising major problems -- at least any beyond preventing its abuse -- a reaction I found very worrying.
The one student who tried to express a contrary view, although normally very articulate, ended up by saying, "Well, it's what I believe and I guess my background has something to do with that." So I emailed my students explaining I felt "that I had not done a good job in presenting the euthanasia debate ... [and] decided to see if I could work out why not by writing about it." I attached an early draft of this article and asked for comments; I received several, very thoughtful replies.
My concern went beyond failing to convince my students that there was, at the least, a strong case to be made against euthanasia. It included the fear that their response was likely to be true also for the wider society. The difficulty of communicating the case against euthanasia and the ease of communicating the case for it, is a serious danger, especially if, as seems likely, we are headed into another debate about whether we should legalize euthanasia in Canada.
Individual rights v. social harm
Why is the case against euthanasia so hard to establish?
When personal and societal values were consistent, widely shared and based on shared religion, the case against euthanasia was simple: God commanded, "Thou shalt not kill." In a secular society based on intense individualism, the case for euthanasia is simple: Individuals have the right to choose the manner, time and place of their death. In contrast, in such societies the case against euthanasia is complex. It requires arguing that harm to the community trumps individual rights or preferences.
One student explained that she thought I was giving far too much weight to concerns about how legalizing euthanasia would harm the community and our shared values, especially that of respect for life, and too little to individuals' rights to autonomy and self-determination, and to euthanasia as a way to relieve people's suffering. She emphasized that individuals' rights have been given priority in contemporary society, and they should also prevail in relation to death. Moreover, legalizing euthanasia was consistent with other changes in society, such as respect for women and access to abortion, she said.
To respond to such arguments, we need to be able to embed euthanasia in a moral context without resorting to religion -- that is, formulate a response that adequately communicates the case against euthanasia from a secular perspective. That requires, first, countering the belief that individual rights should always prevail -- a task I failed at in class.
We must show, as well, there are solid secular arguments against euthanasia, for example, that legalizing euthanasia would harm the very important shared societal value of respect for life, and change the basic norm that we must not kill one another. It would also harm the two main institutions -- law and medicine -- that paradoxically are more important in a secular society than in a religious one for upholding the value of respect for life. And, it would harm people's trust in medicine and make them fearful of seeking treatment.
The meaning of death
So, why has this issue has arisen now? There is nothing new about people becoming terminally ill, suffering, wanting to die, and our being able to kill them. Why now, after we have prohibited euthanasia for millennia, are we debating whether to legalize it?
Although the euthanasia debate usually centres on a dying, identified person, who wants euthanasia, I believe the answer to what has precipitated the debate lies in understanding a complex interaction of certain unprecedented changes in society. Identifying these factors can also help us to see what is needed to make the case against euthanasia clearer and stronger.
Dying alone or unloved seems to be a universal human fear. In democratic western societies many people have a sense of loss of family and community: relationships between intimates have been converted into relationships between strangers. That loss has had a major impact on the circumstances in which we die. Death has been professionalized, technologized, depersonalized and dehumanized. Facing those realities makes euthanasia seem an attractive option and easier to introduce. Euthanasia can be seen as a response to "intense pre-mortem loneliness".
We engage in "death talk" in order to accommodate the inevitable reality of death into the living of our lives. That talk helps us to live reasonably comfortably with that knowledge, which we must do if we are still to be able to find meaning in life.
"Death talk" (and other morals and values talk) used to take place in religion and its churches, synagogues, mosques and temples and was confined to an hour or so a week. Today, it has spilled out into our daily lives, especially through media. The euthanasia debate is one example of such talk.
Moreover, "secular cathedrals" -- our parliaments and courts -- have replaced our religious ones. That has resulted in societal ethical and moral debates being cast in a legal framework. It is not surprising, therefore, that the euthanasia debate centres on its legalization.
The mass media also have major impact on such debates. The media focus on individual cases: people such as Sue Rodriguez -- an ALS sufferer who took her fight to die to the Supreme Court of Canada -- pleading for euthanasia make dramatic, personally and emotionally gripping television.
The arguments against euthanasia, based on the harm that it would do to individuals and society in both the present and the future, are very much more difficult to present visually. Moreover, the vast exposure to death that we are subjected to in both current affairs and entertainment programs might have overwhelmed our sensitivity to the awesomeness of death and, likewise, of inflicting it.
The problem of suffering
But, one of my students responded, "If anything, I think many of our reactions come not from an overexposure to death, but from an aversion to suffering, and an unwillingness or hesitancy to prolong pain."
Finding convincing responses to the relief-of-suffering argument used to justify euthanasia is difficult in secular societies. In the past, we used religion to give value and meaning to suffering. But, now, suffering is often seen as the greatest evil and of no value, which leads to euthanasia being seen as an appropriate response. Some answers to the "suffering argument" might include that:
* even apart from religious belief, it's wrong to kill another human;
* euthanasia would necessarily cause loss of respect for human life;
* it would open up an inevitable slippery slope and set a precedent that would present serious dangers to future generations. Just as our actions could destroy their physical environment, likewise, we could destroy their moral environment. Both environments must be held on trust for them;
* recognizing death as an acceptable way to relieve suffering could influence people contemplating suicide.
Might the strongest argument against euthanasia, however, relate not to death but to life? That is, the argument that normalizing it would destroy a sense of the unfathomable mystery of life and seriously damage our human spirit, especially our capacity to find meaning in life.
Margaret Somerville is director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University, and author of The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit.
João Pedro Afonso said:
“Mariusz, I apologize if I went too far. You are not the first who would think that, nor you’ll be the last. I hope you didn’t mistake my lack of understanding for inconsideration. I read (or tried to read) your opinions carefully!”
No apologies are necessary, and I’m sorry if I snapped at you. Best regards, MW
Dr Susan and Francis, your words are too kind.
Mariusz, I apologize if I went too far. You are not the first who would think that, nor you’ll be the last. I hope you didn’t mistake my lack of understanding for inconsideration. I read (or tried to read) your opinions carefully!
To all, my thanks for the comments I had the opportunity to read here, and to Margaret, my thanks for an excellent article and challenge. It is likely that MercatorNet will close this debate soon, so, see you around.
Cheers,
João
Francis--Thanks so much.
No, the term ‘secular’ Jew does not sound anti-Semitic: at least, not to me, and I’ve faced tons of anti-Semitism in my life, some of it conscious (in America, because I’ve never looked Jewish and people said things in my presence which I was not prepared, ever, to disclose to my parents because they’d have been so distressed) and some of it unconscious (in Cathllics and others Down Under). Since I’m writing a series on the Jews, I’ll probably write a piece on anti-Semitism. At Oberlin, in the first year of a course on the History of Judaism, one of the books I read and reported on was Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew.
Through a miracle, I heard Cardinal Lustiger speak at Parliament House in Sydney. I’d previously read him--one of the few invited guests, I’m quite sure, who had done this! Three hours before he was scheduled to speak, I was told about this ‘invited’ talk. So I rang the ‘right’ people and got there. He reminded me, in his way of approaching intellectual Biblical issues, of one of my late parents’ dearest friends in old age: Oscar Janowsky, a Jewish scholar, who lived next door with his ailing wife in a retirement village near Princeton. For Oscar and me, it was love at first sight. So you’ll appreciate how much I loved hearing the Archbishop of Paris… When he died, I was in America; so I read with intense interest his obituary in the NY Times. It ended with a marvellous bit of Yiddish. I didn’t know about his funeral what you’ve just told me, so I’m very grateful.
JP Afonso: I was sailing along merrily in the choppy waters of your prose when a sudden squall of words overturned my light skiff and I was sunk. I agree with you!
Susan; I was fascinated by your Jewish experiences. I wanted to demonstrate that a doctor with no religious beliefs could still reverence life, however damaged, and try to ameliorate the sickness. That is the true vocation of a doctor. In using the phrase ‘secular Jew’ I felt it sounded insulting but couldn’t think of a better; I mentioned this to one of my sons - who told me I sounded ‘anti-Semitic’! This is nonsense, of course.
I recall reading some books by the late Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Lustiger (born Aaron; his Polish grandfather was a rabbi). He wrote wonderfully of the relationship between Passover and Easter; and at his funeral, in the 800- year-old Catholic cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, his Jewish relations were given the best seats; they chanted the Kaddish and his great-nephew, a boy of 15, read from the Torah in Hebrew. A wonderful occasion of ecumenism.
As to Crime and Punishment and Kristin Lavransdatter: yes yes yes. (I called one of our daughters ‘Kristin’, after the latter, and another has ‘Anna’ as one of her names). A newspaper I write for has begun a weekly column about a ‘classic’ book one would recommend to readers; if you have other ideas, not necessarily of the obvious books, please let me have them.
Wonderful, wonderful observations by JPA.
Just read another remark in my email tray that I thought I was responding to about Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, a novel I taught for some years in an Elective literature course for prospective teachers and, once I think, in a 19thC course for prospective English teachers. If this observation about D’s protagonist appears on this site, linked with observations about euthanasia, I commend it!
As far as I am concerned, there is no greater Christian novel for adults than C & P, although there are contenders for this prize: e.g. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, George Eliot’s Middlemarch (though Mary Ann Evans--the author’s given name-- was estranged from Protestant Church life), and Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter.
(part2/2)
..."This morning a news item stated that despite pre-birth testing, abortion on demand etc, there has been a rise in the number of Down’s syndrome births. Why? It is speculated that parents now know, with expert advice, that such births do not have to be a disaster or tragedy, so they opt for life rather than death. They are responding to a medical and social ‘culture of hope’. These students need to be challenged to examine such a ‘culture of hope’ - and inform their consciences thereby.”
Are you sure they didn’t do it already?
Euthanasia is a legal problem at this moment, in the sense that there is a legal prohibition that many in conscience thinks it shouldn’t exist. The obvious inference is that, they are in favor of euthanasia. So, we ask what is wrong with their conscience. In your idea, if you expose them to a culture of hope, they’ll change their conscience. Although I think it is useful that exposition, what do you think will happen if the “obvious” inference was… wrong? To question a legal prohibition is not the same as to accept or adhere to the practice of what is prohibit. Instead, they might be contending that a legal prohibition isn’t the best way to rule consciences in certain subjects. Consider what you told us: despite the tools to plan births, the Down’s syndrome births are raising. I don’t have enough data to judge critically this report, but for now, is enough to play on the word “despite”. That word implies a surprise, that with all those tools, those births should be downing, not raising. The usual discourse of prohibition adopters is that if the prohibitions are voided, what is prohibited is promoted. That inscribes in the tradition of partisan discourses in which, each of two sides tackling with the same problem accuse the other not only of not solving it but promoting it. However, where there are two sides, one may say, surprised, “despite”, the other may say “I told you so”. Some pro-choice people have always argued that by eliminating the legal prohibitions, that would bring the discussion of the individual and his possibilities to the open. Instead of relying in the law to not do it, we have now to actively convince people to not do it, have to discover arguments we didn’t need in the past, in effect, creating the “culture of hope” you told us about with all his beneficial consequences. Your news appears to give them reason.
(part1/2)
Francis,
“I will just say that I don’t think our arguments really contradict what the other is saying:”
Me neither. My approach and language may be different, but so are a Chinese and a Greek talking about the same thing :-)
On another comments:
“Awakenings”
I remember the film vaguely. It shows that hope is not a vain word, although the end was not that well, wasn’t? I suppose this is going to be the most problematic issue if euthanasia ever enters the mainstream street, the temptation to apply it compulsorily to desperate medical cases where the patient conscience is out of reach. But this is a line, I feel, must never be crossed.
“On self-sacrifice and the Baroness, I didn’t mention it as there was no space (still isn’t!); but one could argue that such ‘self-sacrifice’ as she promotes is really no such thing: it is fear and hopelessness, the weak dominated by the strong.”
No self-sacrifice offer should be demeaned. Imagine I worked all my life to ensure a future to my children, and I’m in the end of it, strapped to a private hospital bed with an irrecoverable disease, each day the costs stealing on that future I wanted to leave. I might decide to be released, to which my hospital refuses, saying I’ll die. This is the kind of dilemmas that might lead to death wishes. I object that we classify this person as weak preyed by the strong, unless we want to risk the same kind of analyze on the hospital motives.
To be fair, I don’t like this example. The dying one should know he will hurt more by dying than by leaving debts behind. But the self-sacrifice bite sounds well. (I was going to talk here about families but is kind of off-the-road)
My last comment is a defense of Margaret students. The funny thing about students is, they are many, interested and inquisitive, the ideal antennas to probe the landscape. My bag of tricks owns a lot to students and I would be a fool to dismiss them. So, what if they are on something? read the next part:
“"If students raise the question of ‘conscience’ one could also debate the difference between an uninformed conscience and an informed one, from a secular perspective perhaps? “…
Continue…
João Pedro Afonso said:
“Mariusz,
“‘About your comment about euthanasia, surely you know that fear from other changes cannot be argument against one.’
Oh yes, it can if the mechanism is the same.”
But you must explain how (is the same) or why. You (or me) might be wrong, but only confronting arguments will know.”
I already DID explain it, in the original posting, and I have repeated the argument in the follow-up. I’m sorry, João,
but I don’t think you are reading my postings carefully enough, or maybe this is a language problem. In any case, I really don’t have the time and energy to repeat myself over and over again, sorry.
Your comment about the news at LifeSiteNews.com: once again, please do not expect me to explain them to you one by one, they are explicit enough but you prefer to put your own spin on them, and I would be again wasting my time to try and straighten this out.
I don’t think we shoud continue this fruitless exchange, good-bye.
This morning I was talking about Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and punishment” when it suddenly occured to me that Raskolnikov’s murder bears striking metaphorical parallels to the problem of euthanasia. Raskolnikov believes that the life of the old moneylender is parasitic and useless so he decides to kill her and use her money for better ends; but in the end he also has to murder the moneylender’s innocent younger sister. The parallels are manifold.
Mariusz,
“‘About your comment about euthanasia, surely you know that fear from other changes cannot be argument against one.’
Oh yes, it can if the mechanism is the same.”
But you must explain how (is the same) or why. You (or me) might be wrong, but only confronting arguments will know.
...
“This is not about reasoning, this is about facts. All over the world (but particularly in the United Kingdon and Canada) freedom of speech and religious rights are being trumped by the homosexual agenda. You can find dozens of examples at http://www.lifesitenews.com.”
I searched and found several articles, but the examples they presented were basically the same. I would expected that with so much widespread global wave, every article would be able to present their own different examples. The gravest are the attacks on the Mormons, but this is clearly a matter for police and hate laws. The others are contract breaches or service denials. You cannot simply refuge on religious rights to do that. It’s an umbrella that served in the past to cover injustices too, and that’s why we have today anti-discrimination laws. Imagine yourself stranded in some town were no one will sell goods to you based on religious motives… you might end dead in starvation.
I found particularly interesting an article about church adoption agencies in the UK. Apparently there are an option in the law that allow them to follow their religious convictions. However, some churches preferred to close their adoption agencies instead of exercising that option, and say it was the government who close them. If that’s true, it is very serious, as it hints of a burning land policy from those churches. Many of the other texts or news I saw are too colorful to my taste, too voluntary and assertive on its sides, like WW propaganda or a call to hosts to battle. I feel instinctive distrust on them because in those cases, truth is usually the first victim to happen.
Mariusz,
“When love is tempered with wisdom - and vice versa - we love the sinner but hate his sins.”
I highly doubt this. A relationship oscillating between love and hate is not uncommon, but is usually considered immature, to much ruled by emotion and the precise kind wisdom is supposed to counter-act.
“Other than that, I still do not like this ‘definition’ of God, for reasons outlined before.”
If I understood you correctly, you don’t like it because it constrains or limits the deity… which would be a contradiction since we define it as all powerful and without limits. I suppose that’s what happens when we try to describe an entity alpha and omega of everything: something big isn’t enough, we have to turn it into something unreachable by any means or definitions. However, you cannot have a meaningful relationship with God without “limiting” or “constraining” him in some way in your mind. If He can do anything, unrestrained by anything, then you cannot expect anything from him too. Your behavior, the actions you do to call is attention, will turn useless, meaningless, because any expectation or rationalization for them, implies to constrain the deity to what you think. In other words, God will be no longer a viable source of moral.
Let me return to the story of Job. I told here I don’t understand it, I didn’t read (in the recent times) some parts, others I have to read again, but I’ll risk an interpretation. To Job, who was the most just of men, is happening everything of bad we can imagine. And this goes on until Job starts lamenting, that he has been always correct (with God) and everything happening to him is unfair. To the laments answer three friends who however are unable to console him, saying that Job was surely in fault for something. The interesting part comes later when God appears: not only Job is confirmed as the justest of men, “repaid” in double his losses, but his friends are also rebuked, despite apparently be the defenders of God. Paying in double is not strange in contract breaches today… is like as if, although unquestionable and transcending all limitations, He could not allow to be seen as lawless or unaccountable. Some absolute constrain must exist, even if self-imposed. “Love” is as good as we can get.
Thanks, Francis P, for the info about this book by Sacks, which I haven’t caught up with. He’s a brilliant writer. Alas: most NY Jews these days (and other American Jews) are secular. In Montclair, NJ, where I spent 2 months last year, the friends with whom I stayed estimated that 60% of the huge congregation for the High Holy Days at B’Nai Keshet, their Reconstructionist synagogue (Children of the Rainbow), were believers. Interesting that they went. I went with immense joy. The liturgy was and is directly linked with ours. It was beautifully celebrated. When the Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement)service ended, I was so moved that tears streamed silently down my cheeks. My dear friend, Ellen Kolba, who was my roommate at Oberlin College in Ohio, knew I would be moved; but even she was surprised by how moved I was.
Following my return to Australia, I lent the B’Nai Keshet prayer book, given to me by my by Ellen and her dear husband Marshall, to a priest in Sydney. He didn’t want to give it back!!!! It contains beautiful prayers for the dead, of course. God bless.
To JP Afonso; thanks for your further reflections on pain. Without wanting to curtail this discussion, but not having time to properly continue, I will just say that I don’t think our arguments really contradict what the other is saying: I always think of that line in the Prayer of St Francis, which I am sure you will know: ‘For it is in giving that we receive...’ That is the Divine paradox; when we give to others - e.g. the dying doctor to the wounded man - we also help ourselves. You have been concentrating on the ‘giving’, I on the ‘receiving’ - but in that moment of grace, they become one.
To return to the article under discussion: what is wrong with euthanasia when the patient, for whatever reason, collapse of mind or body or both, has ceased to be himself? I once read a marvellous book written by a neurologist (and secular Jew), Oliver Sacks. It was called ‘Awakenings’ (later made into a film) and concerned a group of post-encephalitic patients living in a long-stay institution in New York after the Great War. Some of them had been in a waking ‘trance’ for over 20 years or more. When Dr Sacks’ experiment with the new drug ‘L-dopa’ was used on these patients they seemed to return from the living death they had been enduring. What was so affecting in the doctor’s narrative, however, was how these patients, seemingly irretrievably damaged,had retained their core personality when they ‘woke’; all that made them human had lain dormant, been buried, while they were in their trance-like condition; it had not disappeared.
Dr Sacks’ notes to the text are worth reading in themselves; he is clearly widely read in literature as well as in medicine - which perhaps helps to inform and deepen his judgements more than the modern ‘apparatchik-style’ medical training might do?
Wonderful discussion involing Mariusz, Francis, and Don Pedro Alfonso. Many thanks. God bless you, MercatorNet.
João Pedro Afonso said:
“Mariusz, your arguments against the formula “God is love”, don’t appear to fully understand what is love,… unless it is me, that in my incomplete dominion of the English language doesn’t know what it is love. Love allied to wisdom cannot lead to chaos, unless you think that chaos is good. If you love someone, you want what is best to him/her, and that necessarily implies discipline and order too.”
This is exactly what I mean. The common modern (mis)understanding of the formula “God is love” implies an unlimited acceptance of the sinner WITH his sins. (I use the term “sin” in its original meaning of “missing the mark”, i.e., error.) When love is tempered with wisdom - and vice versa - we love the sinner but hate his sins. Unfortunately, this is not what happens nowadays; the wisdom factor is forgotten, and the love factor is misreprestented. Other than that, I still do not like this “definition” of God, for reasons outlined before.
“About your comment about euthanasia, surely you know that fear from other changes cannot be argument against one.”
Oh yes, it can if the mechanism is the same.
“Once, you tried to explain to me why the acceptation of euthanasia will leads to eugenics, but I didn’t bought the idea then…”
I can only repeat what I have written before: “any legal measure allowing [euthanasia] will have unavoidable side effects leading to the progressive abuse of this “right”. We already see such effects at work in case of same-sex marriages: once allowed, they led in several countries to the re-definition of marriage for everybody and to the gradual disappearance of freedom of speech, persecution of religious groups, etc., etc. Thus the legalization of euthanasia will lead to eugenics and beyond.”
“I had already read your implication “same-sex marriages=>gradual disappearance of freedom of speech and persecution of religious groups” in another places, but still, I don’t understand the reasoning)”
This is not about reasoning, this is about facts. All over the world (but particularly in the United Kingdon and Canada) freedom of speech and religious rights are being trumped by the homosexual agenda. You can find dozens of examples at http://www.lifesitenews.com.
Page 1 of 4 : 1 2 3 > Last »