My key reasons for opposing assisted dying (euthanasia and assisted suicide)

Gordon Friesen

By Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

There are many reasons to oppose the legalization of assisted death. However, most of the ones we hear most frequently are not actually calls for the rejection of assisted death as such. They are concerned with more limited goals, associated with the interests of particular groups.

In this list, we can place the demand for doctors' conscience rights, the demand for greater Palliative Care access, and the disabled demand for greater social support. All of these are worthy goals, but they do not actually call for a prohibition of assisted death.

I therefore thought it would be useful to share my own key reasons for prohibiting (not merely palliating) the practices of assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Key Reason # 1:

It is much better for modern society to continue in the principle that all killing is wrong, than to return to pre-modern debates over which killings are permissible.

Throughout the pre-civilized history of the human race, the biggest guy in the tent did pretty much whatever he liked in satisfaction of his own subjective passions, up to and including taking the lives of others, for any reason or for no reason. Lessor males would kill one another for disputes involving females, or in their constant micro-political struggles for dominance. High status females, for their part, would plot to kill the children of rivals (and even the rivals themselves), or conspire with ambitious males in plots to overthrow their husbands and fathers.

As civilization developed, this sort of violence became codified in law, condemning offences and affirming rights. The Roman Pater, to be precise, originally enjoyed a personal power of life and death over everybody living under his roof, wives, children and slaves. Nor was this a Roman aberration. Most "civilized" societies had similar rules.

One may easily understand why a general prohibition against killing, might have been considered (by philosophers) as a major moral and social achievement in the evolution of our race. In truth, it was rightly considered the greatest social goal of all. Yet the amazing fact is that just such a prohibition did indeed succeed in affirming itself, gradually gaining strength over multiple centuries and millennia.

Most amazingly of all, we had very recently come to a point where this prohibition against homicide became very nearly universal. No open murder by Master of servant. No permitted crimes of passion (adultery). No single combat (duels). Indeed many countries had even eliminated capital punishment as the very last instance of permissible homicide. (Self-defence being a disputed zone, where those attached to doctrines of non-resistance still believe that society has fallen short).

For a brief span, we have benefited from a legal context in which self-interested actors might no longer argue for the legitimacy of different acts of homicide, using all of the arts of persuasion and deceit which distinguish the human genius of litigation. For a brief span, all such convoluted and interested attempts were rejected out of hand.

Does it matter where that prohibition comes from? Whether it is Divine decree (as many firmly believe it is) or simply a rational response to tens of thousands of years of lucid intuition in the minds of self-aware persons attempting consciously to distance their own lives from that of the beasts? Is it greater or lessor --as a practical fact-- in one case or the other? Should we not (regardless of historical context), recognize the monumental effort and sacrifice committed by our ancestors to maintain and protect this priceless jewel of human attainment (and to do so in our turn)?

Let us consider...

Our adversaries would have us believe --far beyond a simple neutrality with regards to suicide-- that the act of assistance to suicide is so overwhelmingly desirable in our society that we should accept the first actual reversal of the non-killing principle ever registered, in order to permit its accomplishment.

This proposition is so outrageous, that few people have attempted to support it. And how could they? It is impossible that the substitution of an immediate death for a minimally extended dying period might be so valuable, in and of itself, as to justify the social chaos implicit in a reversal of our core moral and judicial assumptions.

As a result, most promoters of assisted death are simply unwilling to "go there". Which is to say, they will not argue the question within the bounds of an assumed prohibition of homicide (even though their legal remedies are invariably proposed in the form of exceptions to that prohibition). On the contrary, they presume to reject the legitimacy of the prohibition outright, on the simple basis that its historical context has been one of religious dogma.

Nothing, I submit, could be more obtuse. For the underlying suggestion is that no moral conclusions from the human past might possibly be useful, since the entirety of those conclusions had been conceived and understood in religious terms, during all of that time.

Forgive me if I reject that notion as too frivolous for serious consideration.

If one is to maintain that assistance to suicide must be permitted, then it is necessary to demonstrate not only that certain suicides "might" be beneficial, or that the subjective desire of the subject "should" be respected. It need also be demonstrated that such a permission is valuable enough to justify the loss, in social coherence, which would be suffered through the implied rejection of the categorical prohibition of homicide.

Disparaging ideas and people under the supposedly insulting title "religious" will not suffice. It would rather be necessary to attack that prohibition pragmatically, as I have defended it here, without any reference to religion at all.

To be continued...

Gordon Friesen
President, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition July 26, 2024