Danny Webster challenges the idolisation of autonomy, highlighting how assisting suicide undermines the value of choice and freedom
When it was first announced that Kim Leadbeater MP would introduce a private member’s bill on assisted suicide, it was provisionally entitled a ‘choice at the end of life bill’. Eventually it evolved into the even more euphemistic ‘Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.’
The issue of choice is one of the aspects of debate around this law that is underexamined - after all, the logic goes, people should be free to make the choices that they wish to and when people are suffering we should act with compassion and support their choices. Perhaps opponents of the change - myself included - have been reluctant to question this, instead focusing on the very many deficiencies within the Bill.
The healthy limits of choice
But to accept the premise of increasing choice is to fundamentally misunderstand the value and purpose of freedom, alongside the utility of our freedom to choose. Our freedom to choose what we want is constrained in countless ways that we understand, accept and know is for the good of us and works to the benefit of our wider society.
Introducing assisted suicide is a choice we should not be giving ourselves.
I’m the parent of two small children - two typically stubborn, albeit wonderful children. I find myself restricting their choices all the time. Sometimes I do not have the power to grant their wishes as they request nonsensical things, other times I concede to the trivial - yes my two year old son can hold his wet socks in the car seat. But no, he cannot run into the road fuelled by his own desire to do so. I do not let him. Of course I don’t, no parent would.
Our choices throughout our lives are restrained through a complex mix of law, disincentives, cultural norms and expectations, as well as personal understanding of what is better in the long run. My hope is that by telling my daughter she can’t have chocolate before tea she will come to understand the value of a healthy and balanced diet for herself.
The myth of freedom and control
In the debate around assisted suicide we are at risk of both idolising choice and making a myth out of the control we can exercise.
When we turn something good into an idol it lets us down, always. Choice, and the freedom we have to make choices, is vital, it’s a God-given part of our human nature. But choice and autonomy over how we live our life is limited. It cannot be our end goal. It has to be in service of something else, and as a society we rightly create incentives and disincentives to encourage some choices and discourage others.
When we turn something good into an idol it lets us down, always.
Passing a law to permit something implies that it is a legitimate choice and that people should have the freedom to make it. However, not all choices are equally valid, and we should not pretend they are. Nor should we allow our legal system to accommodate them.
We have control within our lives but never complete control - that’s a myth. Support for assisted suicide flourishes on the myth that we can control how we die, and we can’t. There are already many things we can do ourselves, with our families and with the support of wider society and public services to make death better, and that should be our focus. We can exercise some control over what treatments we receive or decisions that are made when we might not have the capacity to make them. But we are not in complete control.
When choice beneifts the few, and harms the vunerable
Prioritising choice and control ignores that both can be abused. Those most vulnerable (a category the close to death inherently fall into) are at risk of being influenced and affected to where their control or choice is not really their own. This might be explicit, or it may be much more subtle; an elderly relative harbouring feelings that what they intended to pass on to their children may be dwindled away on care home fees. The knowledge that resources are scarce so might be better used by people who may live longer.
Exercising choice is sometimes a luxury, it is utilised most by those with the resources and capacity to make the most of their choices, and the choices of others. Permitting a choice does not create a level playing field, it offers advantages and opportunities to some, usually at the expense of those who have the least. By seeking to give people greater choice and control what we may actually do is increase the potential for those choices to be abused and controlled by others.
When it comes to matters of life and death we should help people steward choices wisely, through what we permit and what we encourage. We should certainly not be encouraging people to choose assisted suicide.
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