Listen, then decide, on euthanasia

Now that New Zealanders have been passed the responsibility of deciding whether euthanasia is to be legalised it is time to take the passion out of an impassioned debate. Between now and when the referendum is held next year we have a moral duty to put aside our prejudices and listen with an open mind to all sides.

We need to be conscious there will be those seeking to hijack our emotions. We also need to understand they’ll be doing so from a position of absolute sincerity.

At its most basic, it appears an easy choice. Should we be able to end our lives when we are terminally ill and death is just six months away, or should we not?

The issue is much deeper than that. It belies the simple yes or no answer a referendum requires. It’s the right to dignity in your final days versus the risk of being coerced into ending your life. It’s individual freedom versus the state’s duty to protect the individual, and the ability of medical science to keep us alive versus a subjective judgment on what quality of life we must have to make it worth living.

It could also be that, once you’ve familiarised yourself with the details of the bill, you realise you support euthanasia yet reject this approach as flawed. The same could be true for the reverse.

There are certainly cases where denying someone the ability to end their own life appears cruel and unusual. Few could argue lawyer Lecretia Seales’ last days alive weren’t made more painful by her inability to end it. Her death will certainly be used to argue for the right to end your life.

Suffering like that endured by Seales is often compared to how we treat sick animals, a demonstration that animals are treated more humanely. Yet such a statement that so aggressively grabs for your sense of outrage must also include that this ‘‘humanity’’ is largely extended to avoid us personal cost. Each year millions of animals die grisly deaths. From any objective viewpoint they are not treated better than humans. Not even close.

Being open to understanding the gravity of this decision means acknowledging the validity of qualified opinions, no matter how much they clash with your values.

As a GP, National MP Shane Reti’s views must be recognised as having insights those outside the medical field may not be able to appreciate. When he says he would not want the spectre of euthanasia hanging over every consultation, we should take that on board as reasonable and consider how this bill could change the doctor-patient relationship. Yet his other comment that the world would have lost some ‘‘brightness’’ had Beethoven ended his life six months early, to relieve his suffering from cirrhosis, is an appeal to our emotions rather than our logic.

Euthanasia will not result in a dearth of high culture. And surely, as a nation, we don’t want to prolong an individual’s suffering simply to increase the range of amusements available to us.

Whatever decision the referendum yields, that we are even having it shows the current system is not meeting our needs. It is time to talk about what those needs are. Strip away the fears, strip away the emotions, look past the simplistic arguments, keep it reasoned and be prepared to listen.

Then let your decision come from that.

We have a moral duty to put aside our prejudices ...