On 10 December 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. Article 3 of that declarations states, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”. More than 60 years have passed since its adoption yet the tenets of this document are perceived to be so basic, so fundamental to the human condition, that it has never been amended.
You will search this time-honoured, internationally binding legal statement from end to end but no-where will you find mention of ‘a right to die’; yet the phrase has almost gone beyond debate in western society and in some jurisdictions steps have been or are being put in place to enshrine such a right in law.
Yesterday, in the last judgement to be handed down by the Law Lords prior to its metamorphosis into the Supreme Court, the highest court of appeal in the United Kingdom has taken a significant step in the direction of relaxing the law in connection with ‘assisted suicide’.
Why is it that those who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights missed this one out? Were they unaware of the suffering that is caused by long term degenerative illnesses? Did they not appreciate the torment that loved-ones experience as they watch the long, slow decline of those they hold dear? Or was it, perhaps, that the experience of the years immediately preceding this declaration had highlighted only too clearly the preciousness of human life and the coarsening effect it can have on a society when the lives of some parts of society are held too cheaply?
I do not mean by this article to suggest that those who seek to ease the suffering of those they love do so out of anything other than the highest motives of love and compassion. I am concerned, however, that we appear to be moving along a pathway – with increasing rapidity – where society could regard it as ‘appropriate’ that someone end their own life.
In the fellowship where I meet there is a lady who is held very dear by all members of the congregation. She has suffered from Multiple Sclerosis for around 30 years and for most of the past 20 years she has been almost completely physically incapacitated. She can do literally nothing for herself yet she remains a vibrant, interesting and interested person.
At an even more extreme level, those who have read, or seen the film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Frenchman Jean-Dominique Bauby – a man who could do nothing other than move one eyelid – can be left in no doubt of the phenomenal potential of the human mind even when locked in a body that one would have thought was incapable of communicating anything.
There is clearly a difference with regard to artificially extending life by means of inappropriate medical interventions, but by moving the boundaries so that a precipitated death is seen as being the proper, the appropriate response to suffering and disability surely we massively lower the expectations for individuals. In so doing we could inadvertently encourage them to accept the inevitable. Rather than seeking to make the most of what they have left we force them to concentrate on how much they have lost.
Life is too precious a gift to be thrown away. The Bible describes how human life was first given, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being”, Genesis 2 v7. The Lord Jesus put this gift of life in the balance with the wealth of the whole world and found that it outweighed everything else, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”, Mark 8 v36.