In a perfect world, everything would be black and white. There would be no tough calls, no difficult decisions, and no grey areas. Letting people decide for themselves how they should live – or not live – would not be something we argue about, and yet it is. It would be nice to say, “This is their decision. We should let them make the choice.” Unfortunately, we can’t do that. There are too many ifs, ands, or buts. A decision as big as assisted suicide tends to have a domino effect on so many levels: socially, legally, and spiritually.
Everyone has already heard about the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize assisted suicide, with provisions. They’ve suspended that decision for 12 months so that the federal government can regroup and put a framework of legislation into place. In the interim, lobbyists and concerned citizens are taking this chance to argue for or against it. Most people will have some idea of the controversy surrounding this, but not everyone will know all of the implications.
In one corner, you have people arguing for it. So far, it seems that polls are indicating that a majority of Canadians might be in support of this decision. They believe that each and every person has a right to choose what they do with their lives. They believe that nobody should have to tolerate pain and suffering with no hope of recovery in sight. Those who suffer with “irremediable” illnesses, diseases, or disabilities should have the right to choose if they want to end their pain and die with dignity.
Some individuals have made comments to the effect that rather than focus on ending pain with death, we should instead focus on alleviating it with palliative care. However, people who haven’t been in that situation or witnessed it first hand can’t understand how those people feel. It’s all well and good to search for an option other than assisted suicide, but there’s only so much palliative care can do before you have to resort to being drugged out of your mind just to escape the pain. How would it feel to be fully paralyzed and a prisoner in your own body, waiting years while someone else searches for a cure that might never come before you die? Alternatively, what’s the point of living if you become a vegetable? Nobody has the right to belittle someone else’s suffering by denigrating the relief assisted suicide would bring.
The question is where do we draw the line? Legalizing assisted suicide begs the question of how society should treat all suicide. Who decides who is eligible for suicide? The Supreme Court of Canada legalized suicide not just for those who are terminally ill, but also those who are suffering from a disability. No doubt, there are some disabilities that there is no coming back from; some where you’re paralyzed to the point you can’t speak, some that can turn a person into a vegetable. But then there are people who have been horribly disabled and have still gone on to do great things with their lives. Stephen Hawking is a prime example. Jean-Dominique Bauby is another. What would have happened to those people if the option of assisted suicide had been available when they were having their low moments? The concern here is that the Supreme Court’s decision opens the door to the possibility that it will take advantage of people’s vulnerability in weak moments. It won’t be just the disabled either; soon enough, many people from the “vulnerable communities” might request assisted suicide because of their suffering.
Of course, that decision might be left in the hands of the physician performing the act, but even that carries its own complications. The Supreme Court’s decision stated that no doctor would be forced to go against their own ethics and perform assisted suicide, but they made no statement as to who should replace them. It might end up that the federal government is unable to agree on a framework and what’s left is a patchwork of options in different provinces.
This isn’t an issue of whether or not we value life as a society. It’s a matter of balancing what’s best for the individual versus what’s best for society. At this point, the federal government will have to start by hammering out the specifics of an “irremediable” illness or disability. To start, the timeline for each person will differ. Someone with Huntington’s disease will take longer to reach an extreme state as opposed to someone with pancreatic cancer, for example. So who says when it’s okay for either person to make an informed decision about assisted suicide? It will be the federal government’s job to determine the parameters of eligibility.
Beyond those specifics, it’s fairly clear that the sensitivity of this issue can’t be boiled down into a standardized formula. Each situation will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis in front of a panel of peers. Because it depends on the individual’s situation, precedents would be of almost no help.
As of right now, there’s just one question: who decides who gets to die?
