Barbara Sumner Burstyn: A civilised society should care for its weakest members

COMMENT

It's euthanasia time again. With the guilty verdict in the trial of Lesley Martin, and Act MP Deborah Coddington's odd denial of involvement in, but endorsement of, the death of tetraplegic lawyer Michael Crew 16 years ago, euthanasia is back on the social agenda.

While Deborah Coddington's involvement with Michael Crew was not publicly known, one wonders if she would have responded differently had the Martin verdict gone the other way.

That aside, she said Michael Crew was the owner of his own life and that it was his alone to take - ignoring the fact that he needed considerable help to complete his act of taking.

Deborah Coddington is correct, if you view life in a narrow, born-alone, die-alone kind of way. But set aside the argument of an individual's right to choose to die for a moment and consider this question. How would legalised euthanasia change our society? Specifically, how would it affect those who are terminally ill but don't want to be euthanased, the aged, disabled or beyond functioning?

In the United States, where euthanasia is also a hot topic, disability rights groups are joining forces to fight euthanasia and change the dialogue that surrounds it, from the religious inference of redemptive suffering to more secular debates, such as the appropriateness of neo-eugenics and the rise of the so-called futile-care theory.

The latter would allow doctors to unilaterally refuse a patient's request for life-sustaining treatment, based on the perceived "quality" of that patient's life.

Disabled activist group Not Dead Yet says that while euthanasia is described as compassionate, legalised medical killing, it is really about a deadly double-standard for people with severe disabilities.

Certainly you cannot enact a law without a standard. While proponents scream choice, doctors need something more concrete, a line in the sand of suffering after which killing someone becomes acceptable.

And once the government has taken that first step of acquiescing to the supposed will of the people in legalising euthanasia, what is to stop slippage from the terminally ill to the non-terminally ill, to people with disabilities?

If this seems far-fetched, don't forget it has already been done. In 1933 the German Medical Association legalised physician-assisted suicide. Starting with competent patients with terminal illnesses who requested it, it quickly moved on to mentally incompetent patients and, eventually, to anyone economically or ideologically unprofitable to the state.

Between 1933 and 1941, more than 70,000 "futile or terminal" patients were killed in German hospitals.

A historical aberration? Maybe. But, as Dr Anneke Maendel has pointed out, data from the Netherlands, where physician-assisted suicide is legal, shows that in 1995 almost 1000 deaths were due to active euthanasia without the request of the patient.

The Dutch study concluded that the number of patients killed without their consent had increased by 50 per cent over a five-year period, and that adequate regulation was not possible.

And then, of course, there is the issue of suicide. Take the pro-euthanasia argument of individual choice a step further and you will have to end all opposition to suicide. After all, that fatal act is a personal choice all the way.

Perhaps it is this, the essential dichotomy of euthanasia, that is the real issue - on the one hand, it is positioned as the ultimate choice in a free society, while in reality euthanasia has the potential to be the ultimate solution to the problem of society's human burdens.

This was starkly played out in the Lesley Martin trial. Martin, who has portrayed herself as a staunch pro-euthanasia campaigner, based her defence on her personal state, the level of personal burden and the concomitant exhaustion she suffered.

Which begs the question: if she had just had more help and enough sleep would her mother have lived considerably longer?

People like Lesley Martin and Deborah Coddington want us to view euthanasia in a vacuum of personal rights, as a neutral option, bleached of its impact on society. But it is, in fact, deeply value-laden and our support, or otherwise, reflects the cultural, economical, ethical, spiritual and moral framework of individuals and our society.

So while it's true that we own our own lives, each of us is inextricably connected to the other and there are times when the greater good must triumph over individual freedoms.

This is one of those times. One of the indicators of a civilised society is how well it cares for its weakest members.

Legalising the removal of humans because they do not fit what experience shows would become an increasingly narrow definition of functioning is a form of eugenics, a dangerous and destructive belief system that will slip from the aged, infirm and terminally ill to anyone with a disability, anyone who does not meet a state-endorsed standard of physical and mental wellbeing.

Ask yourself this: if your community supported euthanasia, if you knew that services, support, even tolerance for your infirmity, your disability, your pain and illness was a diminishing resource, what choice would you really have in your decision to accept your own euthanasia?

* This is my last Monday dialogue column for the Herald. Thanks to those who have read and responded, often passionately, to the columns. It's been a pleasure.