Spencer King, the Armstrong CWL’s 2017 bursary recipient, wrote the following essay on the topic of euthanasia and assisted suicide. It has been condensed.
As a young Catholic I am concerned with the legalizing of euthanasia. Life is a gift from God and no human being has the authority to take the life of any person, even if that person wants to die. Birth and death are part of the life process which God has created and we should respect them. Many religions are against euthanasia: Roman Catholic, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, and Christianity. So why is this mass of people, representing almost three quarters of the world’s population, not being heard? Why are euthanasia and assisted suicide becoming more and more acceptable in today’s society?
Euthanasia cannot happen unless someone else is involved. It is not caused by the patient’s actual disease but is something is done to the patient to cause their death. It takes another person’s life, so it is wrong and immoral to perform it.
As the law is changed and we are told to accept euthanasia, society will not be able to keep it under control. Mistakes and abuses cannot be entirely removed and soon the patient will not be the one deciding to end their lives, perhaps others will, even desperate family members.
As well, euthanasia challenges the role of the family doctor as a healer. Physicians should never abuse their patients’ trust or the public’s trust in their professions.
The process of dying is an extremely spiritual time, hence the last rites given by Catholic priests. It should not be artificially disrupted, and by interfering with this natural process of dying, it may possibly interrupt the spirit moving toward God.
As individuals and as a society, we have the responsibility to protect life. Opposition to abortion, murder, suicide, and euthanasia is imperative to the common good of society.
Among the potential effects of legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide is creating create reduced pressure to improve healing or treatment.
If euthanasia had been legal 40 years ago, it is possible that there would be no hospice movement today. The improvement in terminal care is a direct result of attempts made to minimize suffering. If that suffering had been removed for patients, we may never have known the advances in the control of pain, nausea, and other terminal symptoms that the last 20 years have seen.
Some diseases that were terminal a few decades ago are now routinely cured by newly developed treatments. Earlier acceptance of assisted suicide might well have reduced the urgency of research efforts which led to the discovery of those treatments. If we accept euthanasia now, we may well delay by decades the discovery of effective treatments for those diseases that are now terminal.
A certain amount of society is in favour of euthanasia because they feel that as a democratic country, we have the right to decide for ourselves whether or not it is our right to determine when to terminate someone’s life.
The stronger and more widely held opinion is against euthanasia primarily because society feels that it is God’s task to determine when one of his creation’s time has come, and we as human beings are in no position to behave as God and end someone’s life.
No doctor should be allowed to decide who lives and who dies. To suggest euthanasia for a person is to judge that their current life is not worthwhile, and no one has the right to value anyone, even themselves, as worthless.
(There is a difference between active euthanasia – the deliberate ending of life – and the withholding of life-preserving procedures and treatments that would prolong the life of one who is incurably and terminally ill and couldn’t survive without them.)
Who is to decide that saving pain is greater than saving a life? Or that presence of pain is worse than a loss of life? Only time will tell.
Spencer King
