For a rapidly growing number of decision-makers and opinion makers, this would be the implicit message of opponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia (i.e. medical aid in dying, MAiD). If I understand this new definition of humanism correctly, allowing a person to commit suicide on their own is cruelty, so it must be done through an expert in the field, professionally. According to this reasoning, any request to die should indeed be taken care of by the medical profession (here the State). To date, a list of eligibility criteria has been established for proceeding: serious or fatal illness, impending death, capacity to consent, etc. The Superior Court has just dropped the foreseeable death criterion. The current government of Quebec isn’t hiding its intention to remove the criterion of capacity to consent in real-time.
Let us be clear, logically any form of selection according to pre-established guidelines or criteria will only generate “discrimination” and prejudice the new universal (and perhaps absolute) right not to suffer. Because what is at work here is a new right, the “right to die”, or the right for oneself to use all means to eliminate suffering, even death. Logically, once again, there can no longer be any limitation on such a fundamental right as soon as it is codified. The principle of equity will prevail relentlessly as the security principle is weakened, discredited, denied or simply censored. It should be noted that at the very beginning of the “reflection” on the legalization of euthanasia in Quebec, it was imperative to discuss guidelines, restrictions, controls and criteria. There are two possibilities: either the supporters of this legalization hid their game (and had a secret agenda), or they changed their minds when they saw popular and media support for the new law and the change in public opinion. Because there is a relentless and inherent logic to this legal and social trajectory, and it is the advent of a right to be medically killed upon request if one considers one’s level of suffering unacceptable. And, as the journalist Yves Boisvert of La Presse put it, denying this right to a suffering person is equivalent to saying “just kill yourself”, which would be insensitivity to the suffering of others, and therefore unfair cruelty.
During my career as a doctor, I have worked with many people who were suffering, overwhelmed by chronic, often irreversible, suffering. I accompanied many discouraged people who were considering suicide. I averted several of them. I did my best not to abandon anyone (within my limits). Among the suicidal people I was able to convince to continue living (am I a monster for having done so?), I remained in touch with a few, who sometimes come to greet me, just like that, at my office. You have to see the smiling face of a living person, who visits a few years after the period of discouragement, holding the hand of his beloved and thanking you for giving him his chance to live rather than his chance to die, to truly understand the magnitude of the thing. I dare to mention that this person’s suffering or disability has sometimes persisted, but has become livable, acceptable, and above all non-defining. With the application of the new standard that is being legally implemented, such “happiness” would not be possible. These patients would have found a doctor to deliver them from their problems by death. And from experience (I see the faces of real people when I write this) more than from ideology, I dare say: what a shame it would have been, what a loss.
When we look closely at this, we cannot deny that there is a philosophical and even religious basis for the absolute right to “die when and how we want”, that is gradually taking hold. It is in fact a new moral position, based on a new secular religion that is gradually germinating. Hence the increasing intolerance of its followers toward those who do not share the same truths. Hence the license they grant themselves to use coercion to force doctors and nurses to participate in the new cult. The old religions were based on “inspired” religious texts. The new secular universal religion will be based on legal texts written by new sages. And these wise men (judges and politicians) are not only the ones who inspire; they also have the levers of power. Here there is no more separation between the “new church” and power. Should we be pleased about this? The doctors in the Physicians’ Alliance saw it coming from the beginning. And I think they should continue to stand firm because they are becoming, little by little, the last line of defense against a new form of totalitarianism.
I don’t know where all this will lead. Optimists like Yves Boisvert have the impression that this will increase justice, and therefore the happiness of society. I am personally much more pessimistic. Happiness will not increase when the unhappy have been eliminated.
Marc Beauchamp M.D. FRCSC
Orthopedic surgeon
www.beauchamportho.com