The UK Dept. of Public Prosecution has now formally issued its assisted suicide decriminalization guidelines. It is a terrible document that abandons people who are dying, and seriously disabled.
The guideline, which is to be used by local prosecutors, lists assisted suicides that should be prosecuted, e.g., if the victim (its term) was under age 18. But it also lists categories of people the prosecution for whose assisted suicides are not deemed “in the public interest.” From the “Interim Policy for Prosecutors in respect of Cases of Assisted Suicide:”
The public interest factors against prosecution are set out below.
(1) The victim had a clear, settled and informed wish to commit suicide. (2) The victim indicated unequivocally to the suspect that he or she wished to commit suicide. (3) The victim asked personally on his or her own initiative for the assistance of the
suspect. (4) The victim had:
- a terminal illness; or
- a severe and incurable physical disability; or
- a severe degenerative physical condition;from which there was no possibility of recovery.
In other words, if a despairing mother had help with suicide because her 18-year-old was run over by a bus, the policy states that punishing the crime would be in the public interest. But if the mother–or the young man’s best friend for that matter–assists his suicide because he has quadriplegia caused by the bus accident–it may not be in the public interest to prosecute that assisted suicide. Thus, this official document creates an explicitly invidiously discriminatory public policy that holds the lives of people who are healthy and able bodied as having greater value–and hence, are more worthy of protecting–than the lives of people with serious disabilities or the dying. That’s an astonishing abandonment of the most weak and vulnerable in society.
Here are some other factors to be considered by local prosecutors in deciding not prosecute an assisted suicide based on the public interest:
(8) The victim was physically unable to undertake the act that constituted the assistance him or herself. (9) The suspect had sought to dissuade the victim from taking the course of action which resulted in his or her suicide. (10) The victim has considered and pursued to a reasonable extent recognised treatment and care options.
That sounds better than it is: Even here, when attempts to dissuade are mentioned, the document pierces much deeper and more lethally than the Office of Public Prosecution understands. In matters such as these, society will not hear the nuances, nor detect the shades of gray, that the head prosecutor tried to put into this. Indeed, the message to society is not only that suicide for the dying and profoundly disabled is not necessarily a bad thing, but also, that suicide itself may be appropriate if one is suffering “enough.” And that message will be received loudly and clearly; first by the categories of people whose protection of society has now been stripped from them, who now know that society doesn’t believe their lives are worth living. But eventually, as suicide consciousness expands, that meme will spread to others who believe their lives not worth living due to suffering. While there is no doubt the policy is well intended, the pro suicide message these guidelines send will expand and metasticize like a cancerous tumor.
September 23rd, 2009 | 3:28 pm
“a severe and incurable physical disability”
Heck, that could easily apply to me, since I have a very severe learning disorder that is not going away and has a huge impact on my ability to reach my occupational goals. How nice to know that after society has screwed me enough, I will be able to (gasp) kill myself with the assistance of my family. Society’s generosity overwhelms me.
September 23rd, 2009 | 5:25 pm
“that message will be received loudly and clearly; first by the categories of people whose protection of society has now been stripped from them, who now know that society doesn’t believe their lives are worth living.”
That’s been one of my biggest problems with sanctioning assisted suicide. It says certain classes of people have lives not worth living. If there’s universal human dignity and worth, the government needs to ban assisted suicide and punish those who participate to protect against the idea that there are lives not worth living. This threatens whole classes of people. It’s a short step from allowing assisted suicide under this mentality to euthanasia since those lives are deemed not worth living.
This kind of thinking is also bigoted.
September 23rd, 2009 | 10:36 pm
And I would not say the policy is well-intended, because it just isn’t a good intention to state that helping disabled people to kill themselves is not in the interests of society to punish.
September 24th, 2009 | 12:28 am
Well, I said that in the belief (hope) that they don’t understand what they are really doing.
September 24th, 2009 | 12:46 pm
This and public health care will get you to state ‘insisted’ suicides as a matter of course.
September 25th, 2009 | 10:08 am
[...] THE CASE FOR Killing Granny; UK Assisted Suicide: Public Prosecutor Declares Some Lives More Worth Protecting Than Other Lives; UK Culture of Death: Decriminalized Assisted Suicide Already Under Pressure to Expand in UK [...]
September 25th, 2009 | 8:17 pm
Wow, I just found out that the prosecutor in the UK is trying to spin this as “no change in the law” and is trying to say that there is no guarantee of immunity from prosecution. Who does he think he’s fooling? Well, evidently he is fooling a number of religious leaders. I have now seen some three statements or so from Church of England leaders saying that they are opposed to any change in the law and are therefore relieved that the prosecutor says there hasn’t been any change! That might be excusable if they had to take his word for it and he is being deceptive, but these statements were written after the guidelines were already available. Can’t people read?
September 26th, 2009 | 2:04 pm
I just heard your radio interview on Issues, Etc. I’ve been reading your website for a long time now but just started downloading the podcasts for Issues, Etc. It was great to hear somebody I know.
I sure wish they’d advertise on First Things. I think the audiences would be a good match.
September 28th, 2009 | 5:05 pm
Coming to a city near you….Francis Schaeffer warned of this when Roe v. Wade was being argued. He said legalized abortion would lead to “assisted suicide.”
The pattern is always the same with those in power who want to end or control the lives of others. They simply perform the personhood reclassification shuffle. Most recently notable is Ezekeil Emmanuel’s justification for denying the elderly health care. He is averse to telling a sickly elder that they are no longer a useful contributor to society, so denying healt care on that basis would be agist. However, reclassifying them as persons who have already, in the past, enjoyed life and being young, owe it to the young to leave valuable medical resources to them. You had your youth and your productive years. Now it’s time to die.
I hate to sound like a pessimist but I’m afraid the unraveling of the west is irreversible and we see evidences for it everyday. Isn’t it interesting what passes for “progressive” thinking these days.
October 2nd, 2009 | 1:57 pm
[...] has fallen off a vertical moral cliff. First, the head prosecutor for England and Wales effectively decriminalized family and friends assisting the suicides of people with serious disabilities and ter…. Now, a coroner’s inquest has determined that physicians were right not to try and save the [...]
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