I’ve decided to hand over this week’s column to two esteemed guests to debate the upcoming referendum on The End of Life Choice Act and the morality of euthanasia generally.
Alexander De Bauch is a libertarian philosopher. He founded the think tank ‘The Freedom to Do Absolutely Anything Foundation’ and is the author of the bestselling books ‘Free to Think’, ‘Free to Act’ and the slightly lesser-selling, ‘Free to Bother Women at Bus Stops’.
Sir Rufus Digby-Smyth is the sixth Earl of Doncaster, the Queen’s former Lady in Waiting and a well-known UK conservative author now living in Te Kauwhata for tax reasons. His books include the controversial study of women’s suffrage entitled ‘The Worst Mistake We Ever Made’ and his celebration of 18th Century Britain, ‘The Victorian Age : Poverty, Syphilis and Bloody Big Hats.’
THE LIBERTARIAN: Well, let me start with an outline of what the Act states. If you are over 18 and suffering from a terminal illness that causes you ‘unbearable suffering’, a ‘significant and ongoing decline in physical capability’ and is likely to end your life in six months you will with the aid of a physician be able to end your life…
THE CONSERVATIVE: Kill yourself, you mean… let’s not use euphemisms, dear boy.
LIB: If you prefer. I hope your objections are on a more solid basis than quibbles about language-
CON.-Is everything in law.
LIB: Yes. That’s why this law is written very carefully, it-
CON: Balls! The phrases you’ve just quoted are full of subjective judgements. Who’s to say what ‘unbearable suffering’ is? For me it’s being stuck in an elevator with a Jehovah’s Witness. Or what exactly is a ‘significant’ physical decline? Bad knees? Tennis elbow? Love handles? I thought impotency was a significant physical decline until my fourth wife, Kendra gave me this little blue pill-
LIB: -You’re being ridiculous.
CON: Yes, but only to point out how subjective all this is.
LIB: How can it not be subjective? It’s how someone feels when they are ill and facing the last stage of their life. Why should the state interfere with that?
CON: Because there are wider societal considerations.
LIB: Well to quote someone I’m sure you admire, Margaret Thatcher, ‘There is no such thing as society.’
CON: LADY Thatcher, please. Yes, I knew her rather well. Used to play doubles tennis with her and Dennis in the early eighties. Hell of a backhand. But you libertarian chaps never produce the full quotation. She said ‘There’s is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.’ And she also went on to say how entitlements or rights must be balanced with ‘obligations’. All in all, a more subtle point than you Ayn Rand fan boys ever acknowledge. It is precisely the effect of this legislation on families and our obligation to respect life that has me concerned…
LIB: I’m not a Randian. I’m a Nozickian Anarcho-capitalist.
CON: Right. Thanks for clearing that up. Finally I can sleep at night…
LIB: Are you saying that our obligations to our families or ‘society’ include continuing to live even though we are suffering terrible pain?
CON: Yes, I am.
LIB: That sir, is the morality of a sadist.
CON: Only if he doesn’t also apply the same principle to himself.
LIB: I’ll correct myself then. The morality of a sadomasochist.
CON: Ah, despite five years at Eton, I know little of such things. But you are right it is about morality. A morality that holds human life sacred and seeks to protect it. And understands the price for this is sometimes …suffering.
LIB: You may understand that, I don’t. Morality is a private matter. For individuals to decide, not the state. Some believe alcohol is immoral. Are you going to stop drinking scotch if the government forbids it?
CON: Good Lord no…but I could just switch to brandy.
LIB: All alcohol then. Why not? It would be good for society.
CON: An inept comparison. If you universalize my drinking, the worst that will result for society is a hangover in the morning and a large and growing bill at a certain gentleman’s club. Universalize euthanasia (as we may be about to) and there will be a general devaluing of the principle of respect for life.
LIB: Pure mysticism! How does making someone spend their last hours on this planet in terrible pain help us respect life? If you want to talk about principles how about this: ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others’ written by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. Libertarians call it the non-aggression principle. I’ll take a rationally defensible proposition against a traditionalist religious fiat any day.
CON: But that itself is a moral belief.
LIB: Sorry?
CON: Your valuing of reason. Your valuing of freedom. You libertarians can’t escape morality, you know…
LIB: Reason is a belief? Now you sound like one of those radical lefties who thinks mathematics is racist or geography sexist because it was invented by white men.
CON: Like a LEFTY! How dare you! I should remind you I boxed for Cambridge…
AWKWARD SILENCE
LIB: I apologize. Comparing you to a lefty was a terrible thing to do.
CON: Apology accepted. Well, if you are sceptical that euthanasia devalues life, may I draw your attention to the case of Belgium.
RUSTLING OF PAPERS
In 2002 euthanasia was legalised for adults in “constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain”. In that year only 24 people were ‘euthanized’. In 2016-17 there were 4,337. The reasons given include depression, gender-identity crisis and anorexia. Six years ago the law was broadened to include children.
Now if that isn’t a progressive devaluing of life, I don’t know what is.
LIB: Ah, the old slippery slope argument.
CON: Quod erat demonstrandum, I would have thought.
LIB: Our law does not include a psychological provision.
CON: ‘Unbearable suffering’ could be interpreted that way. Loop holes, dear boy, loop holes…
LIB: Just because in Belgium-
CON: Much the same has happened with the Swiss.
LIB: The Belgians and the Swiss-
CON: -Are not us? Perhaps an acceptance of the killing of children and depressed people has something to do with skill at chocolate making….
LIB: No, but they don’t have our British legal tradition of a limited state.
CON: Its’s something of a paradox I know, but in the case of laws against euthanasia the state preserves individual autonomy from the state best by using state power to protect the lives of individuals.
LIB: You’re right it is a paradox. And therefore gobbledygook.
CON: Unsubtle minds, you libertarians.
LIB: Confused thinkers, you conservatives.
CON: And there’s our impasse. We will just have to trust in good old antipodean level headedness to make the right decision.
LIB: Uh Oh.
CON: Yes, quite.
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