Keir Starmer may become our next prime minister. In 2010, in his role as Director of Public Prosecutions, he issued guidelines concerning which cases of assisted suicide were more likely and which less likely to be prosecuted. Critics felt that this was a camel’s-nose-under-the-tent strategy, through which assisted suicide would be normalised in some cases because it would be known in advance that such cases – where the suicidal person had a clear and settled intent to self-terminate – were unlikely to be punished by the law. Starmer at the time assured the public that he was not challenging the law prohibiting assisted suicide: he stressed that the changes made were limited to guidelines on which cases were more likely to attract the attention of the DPP.
Come 2015, as a prominent Labour MP, Starmer vigorously argued for and voted in favour of the Assisted Dying Bill (which was however defeated). Arguments concerning autonomy were central to his thinking.
We live in a society where it is often taken for granted that the more options we have, the better. Even if there are options we never exercise, the very existence of such options is, we tend to think, a good thing. How we understand the nature of freedom will radically affect our understanding of what counts as a just law. Increasingly, we are wedded to a view of freedom opposed to the older view of freedom as potentiality firmly conditioned by our human nature: our bodily and spiritual reality and orientation to fulfilment as the kind of beings we are, capable of being moved by reason and the good. Freedom in our culture is often seen as a power untethered from such considerations, carrying a value which may be far removed from any plausible view of what fulfils us.
The trend to this view of untethered freedom carries with it profound consequences for all of us. In debates about assisted suicide but also abortion, IVF, surrogacy etc the results are increasingly evident. My body, my choice, runs the mantra – often accompanied, however, by the claim that our choice will benefit us in fact. (Indeed, this may be the case: with IVF, the promised child is an undeniable benefit, however morally harmful the means taken to acquire it.)
However, when certain choices are on offer this can end up subjecting us to all sorts of undesirable pressures. Once a choice is ‘on the table’ as a live option, we can no longer go back to the status quo.
As the philosopher David Velleman has emphasised,
“Offering someone an alternative to the status quo makes two outcomes possible for him, but neither of them is the outcome that was possible before. He can now choose the status quo or choose the alternative, but he can no longer have the status quo without choosing it.”
This happens all the time in everyday life. Think of a friend who asks you on a date. Once the request has been made you can no longer return to the (possibly desirable) position of your relationship continuing exactly as it was.
Rather less trivially, think about the position of pregnant women in this country, where the mere existence of the legal option of abortion changes the woman’s position as being simply a mother of an unborn child into one where she is perceived by others (and perhaps herself) as someone who is “rejecting the option of having an abortion”. Even if she doesn’t view herself in this way, others will, and those perceptions may well create pressures either to have an abortion or, if she has the baby, to deal herself with any problems. The very existence of the legal option has transformed her situation.
With euthanasia and assisted suicide, the option undermines the status quo in which our existence is simply a given. I don’t have to justify my continued existence until the option to do away with myself is introduced as a social norm. The existence of this as a legal option in some legislatures transforms the situation of those whose lives may be deemed “worthy of termination”. Such people may have their suicidal valuations of their lives accepted rather than rejected. And if they in fact refuse assisted suicide, they may be expected to deal with the consequences (financial and health-related) of their refusal.
In an earlier age suicide was regarded as per se malum in many societies and this was not just a Christian view. The pagan Aristotle, in discussing whether a man can treat himself unjustly, observes that “one class of just acts are those acts in accordance with any virtue which are prescribed by the law, e.g. the law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not expressly permit it forbids”.
In other words, suicide is the kind of thing which is inherently unjust – an offence against the polis – and can never be prescribed or permitted by law. A society that legalises assisted suicide (or to use the popular euphemism, assisted dying) is, if not prescribing it, then welcoming it as a “worthy” option which should be respected and given medical and social support. And that now worthy option exercises its social pull on our feelings and attitudes towards ourselves and others in a way which will be felt most strongly by those in vulnerable positions, but not only by them. Despite the harm it does to self and others, suicide may come to be seen as an admirable or even morally required act.
Legislation permitting assisted suicide allows a destabilising exception to the principle that one may not kill the innocent. That there are powerful and compelling arguments against suicide which do not rely on a Christian worldview should be recognised by everyone. But it cannot be denied that where that worldview has become clouded if not effaced, the objections to suicide are weakened. For as we see in the sexual realm, in cases where unchastity cannot be easily couched in terms of rights violations (though the person may in fact be wronging himself, others, society and its creator) people may quickly conclude that nothing intrinsically evil is involved. Little wonder that in 1791, French revolutionaries intent on sweeping away “superstition” removed suicide and certain forms of unchastity from the Penal Code even if they did not explicitly approve such acts. Dominion over oneself and self-worship go naturally together and where a culture, like our own, pridefully celebrates such attitudes it becomes hard to see why suicide should be seen as wrong at all. Self-hatred can enter the mix at any point, creating a perfect storm.
A morality focussed merely on personal flourishing and the satisfaction of genuine needs may ultimately be incapable of providing sufficient resistance to this evil. The hollowing out of the moral landscape which neglects the transcendent cause of the common good, and the duties that come with recognition of that cause, weakens the defence that common sense had once provided.
To understand how legislation creates social pressures is to begin to understand that what we legislate radically affects others in the very valuation of their lives. And that valuation is preserved from the extremes of prideful self-worship and abject despair if is grounded in the ultimate good which all true valuation tends towards.
(Photo of Keir Starmer | Getty)
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