When living becomes intolerable

The federal government in Ottawa has approved a bill that would allow Canadians suffering from “grievous and irremediable mental illnesses” — the wording comes from a Canadian Press report — to opt for a medically assisted death.

In two years. If they choose to do so.

And that’s the key. The revised legislation will permit them that choice. The previous legislation didn’t.

The original Medical Assistance in Dying law, which came into effect in 2016, required the person seeking assistance in dying to be capable of consenting.

They not only had to declare their intention to seek medical assistance in dying, they had to be capable of confirming that decision at the moment of action.

Like the traditional qualification for jury duty, they had to be “in their right mind.”

Which excluded persons suffering from various forms of cognitive impairment — people in a coma, or unconscious from pain medication, or who had Alzheimer’s Disease, or who had suffered brain damage…

In other words. a lot of people.

In September 2019, the Quebec Superior Court ruled that those exclusions violated some individuals’ constitutional rights.

The federal government has now modified its legislation, and sent it to the Senate, which further modified it, and sent it back to the House of Commons, which has modified it more and returned it to the Senate, which is giving it further consideration….

The mass media have been busily following the bouncing ball. But not, I think, following the central issue.

Which is about consent. Or its flip side, about imposing one’s will on someone else.

Consent, these days, is a term usually applied to sexual relations. Did she consent to violent sex? Did the university students consent to taking part in sexualized initiation rituals? Did a succession of young women consent to being sexual play toys for millionaire clients? But consent goes far beyond that.

Our most heinous crimes, generally speaking, are those in which one person imposes his will — most often his will, but also hers — on an unwilling victim.

Murder is the most obvious example. One person kills another. Obviously, without the victim’s consent.

The same principle holds for rape. Or physical assault — domestic or otherwise. Or robbery. Or home invasion.

We consider it wrong for one party — in the legal sense of that term — to impose its will on another party.

Unfortunately, that principle has been ignored, until now, in a few contentious areas.

Let me take abortion as an example. (Always a dangerous subject.)

On the one hand, a mother — who may or may not have consented to becoming pregnant — imposes her will on a fetus that cannot yet express its own wishes.

On the other hand, a group of outsiders — in the U.S., a collusion of elderly white male politicians — imposes their standards, their values, to prevent that mother from having an abortion.

It seems to me just as wrong to say a woman cannot have an abortion as it would be to require that she must have an abortion.

Those two extremes seem to me to parallel the arguments around medically assisted death.

On the one hand, there are those for whom life has become intolerable. Because of sickness, disability, frailty, racial prejudice, whatever. Only that person can define what “intolerable” means. No one else can, or should.

On the other hand, there are those who believe life is sacred. That no human has the right to end a life. Even one’s own life.

They fear that people who have become an inconvenience to their family or to society will be pressured into seeking an early exit.

Pretty much everyone agrees that would be wrong.

Again, it seems to me just as wrong to argue that a person may not seek assistance in dying, as it would be to line them up for the gas chamber.

No one should be making that decision for the person most directly involved.

I don’t believe that the MAiD option will be abused — at least, not extensively. Since MAiD was introduced, five years ago, about 7,000 people have taken advantage of it. Out of roughly 1.4 million total deaths over the same period, around 280,000 every year.

My wife would have qualified for medical assistance in dying. She chose not to use it. She discussed it with me. But it had to be her choice, not mine.

What will I do, when my time comes? I don’t know. But I don’t want someone else making that decision for me.

Sharp Edges