{"id":10385,"date":"2017-03-11T00:11:35","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T00:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?page_id=10385"},"modified":"2017-03-11T00:30:11","modified_gmt":"2017-03-11T00:30:11","slug":"compassion-thats-not","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/compassion-thats-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Compassion That\u2019s Not"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Writing<\/a> in America <\/em>Magazine, Jean Welch Hill, director of the ominously-named Peace and Justice Commission for the [Roman Catholic] diocese of Salt Lake City argues against peace and justice for the terminally ill:<\/p>\n

Imagine telling someone who is unable to walk that their life no longer has value. Or telling a loved one who needs help eating that they have lost all dignity. Or explaining to a friend that you can\u2019t visit them anymore because their illness has made them unattractive.<\/p>\n

Few would say any of these to a stranger, let alone a loved one. Yet the message of assisted suicide amounts to telling people who have lost the ability to function as they have in the past that they should just cease to exist. This has been the message we have heard for three years in Utah from proponents of assisted suicide legislation.<\/p>\n

The definition of dignity implied in these proposed laws, which have followed the Oregon model, is not about the inherent worth of the person but about their physical state. We should keep in mind the great injustices that occur when we decide that human worth depends on perceived mental capacity or physical attributes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This, I am afraid, is at best misleading and at worst dishonest.<\/p>\n

What assisted suicide is really\u00a0about is enabling terribly ill people\u00a0to decide for themselves that enough is enough. It is about autonomy, it is about dignity and, often, it is about the ability to bring terrible pain to an end.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are many who have profound religious and philosophical objections to the idea of assisted suicide (even when it is accompanied with the sort of safeguards seen in Oregon). They are free to\u00a0stand by those\u00a0principles up to the very end. But to insist, by force of law, that others should do likewise is\u00a0 coercion, not compassion,\u00a0a coercion made worse by the condescension in which it is wrapped. These poor dying folk, you see, are simply incapable of deciding what is right for themselves.<\/p>\n

After all, they might even be nuts.<\/p>\n

Hill:<\/p>\n

[M]ost terminally ill patients will overcome these fears with proper mental health care. Britain\u2019s \u201cCare Not Killing\u201d Alliance cites a 2006 study by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, in which almost all patients who sought assisted suicide changed their minds after competent and effective ongoing psychiatric treatment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One<\/em> study.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth adding that in 2014, the Royal College of Psychiatrists issued<\/a> a statement on assisted dying for the terminally ill that ended as follows (my emphasis added):<\/p>\n

As individuals and citizens we also cannot fail to acknowledge that notwithstanding our appropriate cautions and caveats, there will still be those who continue to believe that their current circumstances are unendurable and unacceptable.\u00a0 Each of us will have our views on how we should respond to these situations.\u00a0 We do not think that the College should take a specific position on this.\u00a0<\/strong> Finally, the decision on whether to legalise physician assisted suicide is a matter for Parliament and the Courts. The only position the College takes on this matter at present is that we will always act within the law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As is usual in this debate, Ms. Hill isn\u2019t slow to start talking about the slippery slope, citing some (genuinely troubling, at least as presented) data from The Netherlands, which it is claimed show that doctors, not patients, are taking the decision to end patients’ lives. That’s very wrong, and the answer to it is well-crafted legislation. But to use the slippery slope as an argument against the autonomy of those who have slid very far down a hideous slope of their own is to add insult to appalling injury.<\/p>\n

Hill concludes with a call for better care for those at the end of life, noting, not inaccurately, that it is not always available. She wants, she claims, to \u201cfix the existing problems within our health care system and allow all people to truly die with dignity.\u201d The first half of that sentence may be sincere, but it is also boilerplate. The second half is disingenuous.<\/p>\n

When Ms. Hill\u00a0claims that she\u00a0want to allows all people to \u201cdie with dignity\u201d,\u00a0she does so\u00a0only on her own terms, something\u00a0that\u00a0those patients who disagree\u00a0with her definition of dignity will find horribly arrogant and\u00a0unforgivably cruel.<\/p>\n

And they will be right to do so.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing in America Magazine, Jean Welch Hill, director of the ominously-named Peace and Justice Commission for the [Roman Catholic] diocese of Salt Lake City argues against peace and justice for the terminally ill: Imagine telling someone who is unable to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10385"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10392,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10385\/revisions\/10392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}