Euthanasia case lacks integrity

THE recent case of an appeal to the court by Dr Sue Walter and her friend Dieter Harck to legalise assisted suicide reeks of intellectual dishonesty. Their argument hinges on a medical diagnosis of their condition that would lead to suffering they prefer to avoid.

Laws cannot be formulated and enacted based on arbitrary acts of the will, but by sound logical reasoning. Can someone accused of financial fraud use the excuse of poverty to escape punishment for a crime?

Hunger, pain, anger, hatred, anguish and suffering are subjective, emotional and sensory experiences that cannot be used as excuses to justify criminal acts.

To appeal to a “choice of freedom” for assisted suicide is to seek permission to partake in a disordered act that goes against the common good of society. It is a request with the intent to postulate it as a “good” deed.

Such acts may be excusable, but cannot be justified to commit criminal actions that are intended to kill another human being, irrespective if they give consent or not. Human beings don’t ask for permission to commit suicide. Most societies view suicide as an act generally motivated by situations of despair.

It is obvious that the legal intentions of Walter and Harck and their cohorts – “Dying with dignity SA” – have little to do with suffering; less to do with a person being too “weak” to perform the act of suicide and nothing to do with “dignity”.

Proponents of assisted suicide have smuggled the moral concept of “dignity” into their rhetoric to numb the conscience of the person requesting the option of death into believing it would be a “good” human response to suffering and pain. If anything, these groups are embarking on a project to legalise killing, seeking the use of medical “experts” whose diagnosis should be accepted as unquestionable.

The motive for seeking an agent – a medical doctor – to write the script and perform the act of killing has nothing to do with medicine, but is a sinister plan to employ and convert physicians who have a duty to heal, protect life and comfort the afflicted.

If euthanasia is to be legalised, then we must wonder why the death penalty, racism and apartheid were condemned as evil acts against humanity.