23rd October 2020
By Ruth Bushell
The ‘slippery slope’ argument is an old one but remains pertinent today as we see euthanasia and assisted dying laws being further liberalised.
The most recent development in euthanasia law in the Netherlands saw the introduction of euthanasia for children under 12 with terminal illness. It’s a shocking result that highlights just how quickly the ‘culture of death’ has infiltrated our society.
The words ‘culture of death’ sound hyperbolic but consider all those that are dehumanised on a daily basis. The unborn are referred to as ‘pregnancy tissue’ at best and ‘parasites’ at worst. The elderly and disabled are hidden in care homes and called ‘clients’, ‘residents’ or ‘patients’. Prisoners are inmates and those on death row are routinely described as ‘monsters’, as ‘inhuman’. But history shows us that humans can do awful things and remain stubbornly human. The term human is not analogous with good or evil, old or young, well or ill. It is simply the name we have given our species. The postmodern assumption is that our humanity is dependent on our happiness, pleasure and ‘purpose’, that a life without those things is worthless and disturbing to those around it. We as pro-lifers say our humanity is fixed, unchanging and innately valuable from the moment of our conception.
The idea of a suffering child is abhorrent to everyone and I have no doubt that the recent legalisation of euthanasia for children in the Netherlands was motivated by pity and good will. But as Stefan Zweig’s pivotal novel demonstrated, pity can be used as much to avoid doing good as it can to do so:
“There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart’s impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another’s unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one’s own soul against the sufferings of another; and the other, the only one at counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond.”
― Stefan Zweig, Beware of Pity
Death is easier for us as outsiders to deal with than suffering – but it is not better. Death satisfies our ‘impatience to be rid as quickly as possible…from the sight of another’s unhappiness’. A dead child can be mourned and buried and remembered as happy and healthy. Their suffering can be forgotten. A living, sick child is a daily reminder of agony, of the unfairness and injustice of life, but killing that child will not diminish one iota of the world’s agony or injustice. Instead of being offered euthanasia parents should be supported by friends, families and professionals, people that remind them that no matter the shortness or difficulty of their child’s life it was unique and precious and absolutely worth it. People who celebrate that life instead of recoiling from it under the guise of ‘pity’. Even a day’s life within the confines of one hospital room is, in terms of evolution, miraculous. It is an impossible flicker of light and existence born out of dust and nothingness. It may be a life starved of our idea of ‘purpose’ and full of pain but in the comfort of another human’s voice, the light of the sun, the act of movement and crucially the affect that life had on those around them is reason and purpose in abundance. 
We cannot blame our current circumstances on the lawmakers alone. As a country and as a part of Western civilisation we have been thinking up ways to escape the suffering of others for a long time now. We expect the state to protect us from the unsavoury indignity and pain of our neighbours. It is the selfishness of the healthy that has driven the neglect of the unhealthy. Institutions are increasingly not for the people in them but the people out of them. They are the places where those no one else wants to think about are kept. During corona virus care home residents were left more alone than ever but even before that it was not uncommon for some of them to never have visitors. The same phenomenon of the well wilfully forgetting the ill and undesirable can be seen in our prisons and hospitals. In a society that pursues economic productivity over all else the young and fit are channeled into jobs that take up more and more time, leaving their children, parents, friends and neighbours to be looked after by strangers. Strangers who are often paid some of the lowest wages possible. It is indicative of how upside down our thinking has become that those who work in the ‘care’ sector are valued so little. In a world of materialism and ‘self-empowerment’ the care of others is a strange and devalued concept. Euthanasia does not come from nothing, it is the natural consequence of a society that shuns its most vulnerable. The onus is on all of us to rehumanise these people, for we shall one day become them and who then will protect us from the ‘pity’ of our society?
Alongside our collective squeamishness around illness and disability is a second ‘great divorce’ between generations. Each generation becomes more separate from the last and as each generation gets closer to old age they become more and more repulsed by it. Having been protected from the indignities of old age when they were young they are now shocked by them. Parents tell their children they don’t want to die like their grandparents did, the children then don’t want to die as their parents did. We demand improvement for everything but death has a limit. We are privileged to live in a country with a healthcare system that can provide top of the range surgery and pain relief but it cannot take away every discomfort and indignity. Discomfort and indignity are not simply part of life they are life. Man is not here for brunches and walks on the beach and chocolate cake alone. We are here to endure and fail and hope and (occasionally) overcome. I say this not as a pessimist but as someone who appreciates the wonder of our species, our adaptability and audacity in the face of not only our own suffering but also that of others. Throughout our history we have shown an endless creativity in our attempts to alleviate suffering but we have ultimately accepted that it can never be eliminated entirely. Euthanasia and assisted dying fly in the face of this creativity and offer a lazy, blunt instrument as a false solution to an exceedingly complex, human problem.
If we are to avoid sliding down the slope even further we must act now to rebuild the bridges between well and ill, young and old, ‘useful’ and ‘useless’. We must recognise the unchanging, unwavering nature of our own humanity that lasts from conception until natural death regardless of the state of our bodies or minds.
Look out for our next blog on euthanasia which will focus on the issues of dignity, control and freedom surrounding death.
