Debate carries guiding question
Does the End of Life Choice Bill usher a merciful release or the state sanctification of despair? Tough questions. But there’s another one. So simple, so familiar, that it may seem trivial. In fact it’s the most essential of them all.
Whose life is it?
We know the answer to that, surely. Every decision we make on this proposed legislation must be calibrated against that knowledge.
This is a bill that requires New Zealanders to make a clear-eyed call through stinging tears.
We cannot let them blind us, which is a risk in a debate where it may be easier to feel what’s right than to see what’s right.
This is not an argument against faith or against adherence to personal beliefs.
It is a call to apply genuine scrutiny to both sides of the divide.
Starting with a bit of honesty about how things really are on the deathbeds of the nation. Not just how we like to tell ourselves they should be.
It’s a merciful truth that palliative care continues to improve. Many sufferers’ path has been beautifully eased as a result.
But there’s a different, brutal, reality for others who have endured what they attest to be torments beyond their tolerances; depths of disempowerment that come from being denied either a life that carries meaning for them, or the death that will end it on their terms.
Tell them or their families the system isn’t broken and they will ask you to explain all the writhing that goes on, quietly, within.
Equally, we need to apply red-eyed scrutiny to the other side of the debate. Especially when it comes to the assurances about protections within the bill to prevent the creeping emergence of a hideous new social tolerance for expedient death.
The bill is targeted at people in what’s expected to be the final six months of their life, or in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability, still able to understand the nature and consequences of assisted dying/euthanasia and experiencing ‘‘unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved in a tolerable way’’.
All of which depicts an informed decision not made in haste, or amid temporary depression, or by the mentally ill. But what of the requirement that the dying person’s request being made free from pressure?
We say it’s a requirement but there’s a difference between insisting on this and ensuring it.
People can feel explicit or implicit pressure from outside sources. But more than that, they can apply it to themselves through that implacable but so-common view among the elderly, especially, that they don’t want to be a burden. And what if they keep this decision to themselves and determine to persuade the authorities on the basis of other more acceptable reasons, just to get their self-sacrificial way?
So yes, difficult calls abound. Nevertheless, in spite of some of the more heated rhetoric, there’s no villainy, no inherent cynicism, at the core of this proposed legislation – or the opposition to it.
Each camp is essentially drawing from the same deep wells of love and anguish. This makes for a painful debate, but at least we have a guiding question.
‘‘It’s a merciful truth that palliative care continues to improve . . . But there’s a different, brutal, reality for others who have endured what they attest to be torments beyond their tolerances.’’