Euphemism and euthanasia
Canadians are already indoctrinated that some of us have the ‘Right to Die’
John Cleese delivered a barrage of death-related euphemisms about Polly Parrot with signature aplomb in a classic Monty Python skit: ‘This parrot is bleedin’ demised! It’s passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet his maker. This is a LATE parrot. It’s a stiff — bereft of life! It rests in peace ... this is an Ex-parrot!’
This article examines our use of euphemism, especially over death and dying. Euphemism is a softer word or phrase substituted for more frank words which are in some way perceived to be hurtful, unpleasant or objectionable. (‘Passed away’ for died / ‘put to sleep’ for euthanized.) Euphemism can virtue signal ‘appropriate’ political correctness, moral superiority and group ideology. SJWmandated euphemisms limit free speech and the truth can be misrepresented by a darker type of euphemism: ‘Doublespeak’. This crystalized from George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’: it became reality during Stalin’s Great Purge when political prisoners were sentenced to “Imprisonment without Right to Correspondence” — they could not correspond because they were executed after sentencing.
The most notorious example of euphemism came from Heinrich Himmler and the “Endlösung der Judenfrage” — ‘the Final Solution to the Jewish Question’: six million Jews ‘guided’ to their death after ‘evacuation’.
George W. (at the time the Leader of the Free World) used the phrase “aggressive interrogation of captured terrorists” to misrepresent the systemic torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib during the US invasion of Iraq. In simple English this is ‘the torture of captives suspected of being terrorists’.
Canada is bilingual and has many citizens whose mother tongue is not French or English so all of us should communicate clearly. For example a doctor might say “I’m sorry, your relative is gone …” to mean the patient died. Relatives could easily misunderstand the euphemism ‘gone’ to mean the patient simply left Richard Wagner of the Supreme Court: Kevin Hay writes: ‘The Chief Justice says that he is encouraging dissent.”
the hospital. Legal communications should be especially clear: more so Supreme Court judgments which should avoid all idiom, jargon, colloquialism and euphemism.
One of the most profound Supreme Court judgments was the 2015 Carter decision. This decision was written using euphemisms like ‘Assisted Suicide’ and ‘Assisted Death’ over more pointed terms as ‘Euthanasia’. Assisted Suicide is suicide by legallyprovided poison and Assisted Death is the only type of routine state-sanctioned homicide in Canada. Legally, morally and ethically there is a world of difference between them — even outcomes are not the same. (In Oregon which only allows ‘assistance’ — as in the provision of a poison / ‘medication’ to a person with a terminal illness — up to one third of those receiving a prescription do not ever take it.)
The Supreme Court — including the now Chief Justice, the Right Honourable Richard Wagner — unanimously interpreted a simple phrase from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms “Everyone has the Right to Life” to mean that not only some Canadians have the right to kill themselves with assistance but also that they may die at the hand of another Canadian (i.e. a physician) if they so choose. The Chief Justice says that he is encouraging dissent but it
is distressing that not one Justice objected to the new interpretation of our ‘Right to Life’ which is evidently a ‘Right to Die’ for some Canadians. (This is more perplexing after reading the UN definition of Human Rights as being “universal and inalienable; indivisible; interdependent and interrelated. They are universal because everyone is born with and possesses the same rights…”)
Instead of nine Supreme Court Justices ‘socially-engineering’ new Canadian values, it is more appropriate that a clearly worded ‘Right to Die’ is put to all citizens in a referendum and then if passed, we would have Parliament rewrite the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Sadly any future referendum in Canada is tainted because many are already indoctrinated that some of us have the ‘Right to Die’ at the hand of another.
A free civilization cannot achieve proper dialectic unless we have clear communication. Euphemism patently damages that discourse — sometimes fatally.
Kevin Hay is a Hippocratic family physician and an amateur columnist whose articles have appeared in The Hamilton Spectator, The Province (Vancouver), The Medical Post, VitalSigns (Alberta) and the Alberta Doctors Digest. He is on twitter @kevinhay77.