This is where suicide advocacy leads. In the UK, an aging but healthy couple have committed joint suicide–and blamed the anti assisted suicide law. From the story:
A couple who wrote to the BBC to say they had chosen to take their own lives and criticised British laws on assisted suicides have been found dead at their home, police said last night . Dennis Milner, 83, and his wife Flora, 81, from Newbury, Berkshire, sent a letter and statement to the BBC saying they had “chosen to peacefully end our lives” to avoid “a living death”. The letter was received by the broadcaster yesterday . The couple’s bodies were discovered on Sunday, Thames Valley police said. In the note, the couple said they hoped to draw attention to the “serious human dilemma” faced by those who want to end their lives. In handwritten notes below a typed section of the letter, Dennis Milner wrote: “Arranging this so that it does not fail has been very difficult and traumatic for us. This need not and should not be the case.”
In a statement with the letter they said that they had enjoyed “a happy, loving and exciting life” and thanked the NHS for extending their lives. But they said they had “just one serious and disappointing criticism of our society “Today we have been denied what we believe to be our basic human right – to terminate our own lives, in our own home, at our own choosing, with our loved ones around us, without anyone having to face any legal possibilities or harassment,” they said. The couple’s daughter, Chrissy, told the BBC her parents were in good health but wanted to end their lives before they were unable to care for themselves.
What kind of a society are we developing when needing care is deemed a fate worse than death? This story is a warning of the zeitgeist of our times: Once the meme sinks into the public’s consciousness that suicide is a “right” and self killing is an acceptable answer to suffering–or even the fear of future suffering–then there are no lines that can be drawn and this kind of tragedy becomes inevitable.
November 4th, 2009 | 7:28 pm
Generally speaking, when two otherwise healthy people commit suicide, we call that mental illness.
November 4th, 2009 | 8:32 pm
[...] Suicide Nation: Healthy UK Couple Commit Joint Suicide–Blame Anti … [...]
November 4th, 2009 | 8:47 pm
[...] Suicide Nation: Healthy UK Couple Commit Joint Suicide–Blame Anti … [...]
November 4th, 2009 | 10:09 pm
I don’t want to be helpless and dependent on others when I’m very old either. Who WOULD? But I’m not there yet, and until I am, I won’t know whether I’d rather be alive and in that condition than dead, and that’s the point, and the same point as with “living wills” — one can’t know until it happens. It’s against nature to want to be dead anyway, and death is going to happen anyway and doesn’t need to be brought into being; there are plenty of futile care theorists and people concerned about “end of life” eager to bring that about whether one wants it or not as it is. What I find interesting here is that they’re WHINING about it. If you’re going to do something either do it or don’t do it, do it the best you can, and that’s the end of it. Their carrying on about it is like saying one has a right to die just as one has a right to find sanitary conditions in a supermarket. It’s like they’re Democrats or something. Nothing is their responsibility, it should all be made easy for them, they’re just entitled…
November 4th, 2009 | 11:58 pm
[...] Suicide Nation: Healthy UK Couple Commit Joint Suicide–Blame Anti … [...]
November 5th, 2009 | 12:35 am
[...] Suicide Nation: Healthy UK Couple Commit Joint Suicide–Blame Anti … [...]
November 5th, 2009 | 12:46 am
They think making a point is worth their own LIVES? They’re fully aware that this is irreversible? How could anyone want to die so much that they worry it won’t work? It’s mind-boggling. At least to healthy people who prefer to live it is. How can anyone want something that they don’t even REALLY know what it is, never having experienced it? Bizarre.
November 5th, 2009 | 12:50 am
[...] Suicide Nation: Healthy UK Couple Commit Joint Suicide–Blame Anti … [...]
November 5th, 2009 | 2:02 pm
[...] who are not terminally ill. And now illustrating the radical scope of the assisted suicide meme, in the wake of an elderly husband and wife’s joint suicide, their daughter wants “assisted dying” debated–even though her parents were [...]
November 5th, 2009 | 5:50 pm
Wesley: you ask: “What kind of a society are we developing when needing care is deemed a fate worse than death?” Perhaps the better question would have been: “What kind of society are we developing if we can seriously claim that government’s right to control our lives is superior to your own?” Isn’t that what you’ve been claiming all along is wrong with “Obamacare”?
Do you presume to speak for society by second-guessing the opinions of a couple you neither know nor have spoken with? This couple obviously cherished their personal beliefs and acted on them. When did you become the principal spokesperson for their moral standards, or indeed for anyone’s moral standards except you own? Was it a bright light on the way to Damascus, perhaps; or voices speaking to you out of thin air?
You’ve claimed that being human means having a moral sense, but your writing implies that sense is valid only to the extent that it coincides with your own. That it’s Smith’s way or the highway. That you know better than anyone else what’s right for all us moral degenerates who hold contrary opinions about the individual’s superiority to government.
Your writings raise an unpleasant question, Wesley: if you believe so strongly that society’s power over an individual is superior to his own, are you a fascist? Or a closet Democrat?
November 5th, 2009 | 7:55 pm
HW:
Try a thought experiment. Imagine that Wesley’s motives toward this case do not arise out of a desire to rule, to tell other people what to do. Imagine instead that it arises out of concern, a desire that a fellow human being not hurt themselves. Imagine further that Wesley has some experience with the justifiable fear people have about being dependent on others, but believes that it is often exaggerated, and that it is possible to live a dignified life even when one is no longer wholly self-sufficient.
In other words, imagine that Wesley cares about these people he’s never met and hopes that they don’t kill themselves because they’re afraid of something that is not so terrible – and that he hopes that they won’t serve as an example to other frightened people to kill themselves as well.
November 5th, 2009 | 8:02 pm
Yes, imagine. And imagine knowing that people who might want to kill themselves today, might be so glad they didn’t next week or next month. And imagine the genuine threat that suicide culture could present to vulnerable and exploitable people. Imagine.
November 5th, 2009 | 11:04 pm
“chosen to peacefully end our lives”
-These troubled people not only commit the crime of all crimes against human dignity, they announce it with a split infinitive.
November 6th, 2009 | 1:46 am
HW: I think Wesley is a closet Democrat, who’s still in some ways the kind of liberal liberals USED to be. In order to be that kind of liberal today, one has to be a conservative, because today’s liberals are fascists, which is what you’re telling him he is, and I see the same flaws in his theory of human exceptionalism that you do, but in different ways. I know what you mean about the right of the individual over the right of the government, and it’s interesting to hear someone with your political orientation say that. What Wesley is concerned about comes from what he’s actually seen in his experience with hospice patients, and based on what I’ve seen, he’s correct about the growing societal pressure for others to die rather than have the right to exercise their personal choice to live.
November 6th, 2009 | 9:41 am
Ianthe: I can agree with you, except that Wesley is not only advocating against “the growing societal pressure for others to die rather than have the right to exercise their personal choice to live.” He’s also advocating against the right to exercise one’s personal choice to die.
November 6th, 2009 | 10:16 am
Wesley & SparkVark: Yes, I can imagine that. But will either of you deny that you favor use of government power to deprive individuals of a choice with which you personally disagree, but which does not cause you actual harm? Please note: I said ACTUAL, not imagined, harm.
Wesley, I ask you in particular: what would your position have been in Griswold? Would you have decided that a state has the right to forbid the use of all forms of contraception by its residents; or would you have decided that the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments imply — without specifically stating it — that consenting adults have a right to privacy in their bedrooms?
November 6th, 2009 | 10:20 am
bill russell: while you’re at it, a semicolon between “dignity” and “they” would be more appropriate.
November 6th, 2009 | 10:41 am
Bill Russell: Of course they do. Thank God I’m not a lone voice in the wilderness.
November 6th, 2009 | 3:57 pm
Favor the use of government power? I don’t think the use of force comes into this post at all, HW. Wesley and I both deplore the way in which our society sends or reinforces the message that death by one’s own hand is preferable to needing aid when one is old and feeble. I think suicide is wrong, and that society should discourage it instead of encouraging it.
If someone is determined to end their own life, all the state power in the world won’t stop them. The effective way to stop a suicide is to convince the person contemplating it that it is the wrong thing to do.
November 6th, 2009 | 5:32 pm
SparcVark: Thanks, but the question I asked was whether you and Wesley deny that you favor use of government power to deprive individuals of a choice with which you personally disagree, but which does not cause you actual harm? I have yet to hear from Wesley about this, or about how he might have decided Griswold v. Connecticut.
BTW, since you mention it, just how would you have society discourage it?
November 6th, 2009 | 8:38 pm
HW:
Once again, this is not about force. No government power would be sufficient to deprive a sufficiently determined person of the choice to commit suicide, so why ever would I support that?
Suicide is discouraged, for the most part, by addressing the fear that leads to it. Some people are in physical pain, or afraid of it, and they need proper medical treatment to alleviate that pain. Other people are afraid of being disabled, and would benefit from being shown that it is possible to live a meaningful life even with a disability. Still others are sad, or lonely, or depressed, and need to receive the message that someone cares about them.
Also, can you be sure that someone else committing suicide will never cause me actual harm? What if the person is someone I love, and will miss? What if I am the one who comes across their body, and am scarred by the experience? What if the steady acceptance of suicide leads to a society in which I am killed against my will when I am no longer productive?
November 6th, 2009 | 10:42 pm
HW: No, it should be a comma; the comma is correct.
As for the right to suicide, there are some things the law really can’t do anything about, even though it’s necessary for the sake of society for the law to make them illegal. Somebody wants to kill themself, they’ll find a way; if anyone else is involved, it’s no longer suicide. SUIcide is killing OF ONESELF, as I don’t have to tell you, as you’re a classicist. With anyone else involved in the act, it’s something else.
November 6th, 2009 | 10:49 pm
HW: I would agree that either a comma or a semicolon could have followed “No” at the beginning of my last post. As for the scenario of someone wanting to die but not being physically able to kill him- or herself, when he or she ends up dead, it’s either the result of natural causes or something other than suicide.
November 7th, 2009 | 7:07 pm
Wesley. Are you ever going to tell us how you would have decided Griswold v. Connecticut, or would you prefer that we didn’t see how your mind works?
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