Page 4384 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 19 November 1991
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The law needs to be changed to allow medical practitioners to advise about methods of suicide. Ideally, it would be possible for qualified medical practitioners to administer the drugs under strictly controlled conditions so as to prevent any chance of imposition or coercion. I would not like that to be misconstrued; the medical practitioner should be able to deliver the drugs for the person to administer himself or herself. It may well be that a qualified medical practitioner would be prepared to assist a frail, aged and in pain person, for example, and would actually hold the syringe and use positive action to indicate that they are participating and are attempting to bring about the delivery of that drug.
Any legalisation would need to provide safeguards against coercion, against fraud, and against those difficulties that are raised in the normal arguments against euthanasia. Voluntary euthanasia would require the participation of doctors, relatives and patients, and it would require exhaustive discussion and documentation and exhaustive counselling. It is important, of course, to avoid the case I referred to earlier where somebody who is depressed decides that they wish to commit suicide.
I have heard some say that life is thrust upon us; the choice to live is not ours, but the right to die should be. A statement of that nature expresses the strength of feeling that some people will reach. Let me emphasise that in dealing with this issue we should not do as Archbishop Carroll has done and try to turn it into a black-and-white issue. It is not. It is an easy way to debate such an issue. It is an easy way to put down the logical, rational and thoughtful arguments that may well go into a debate such as this to try to turn it into a black-and-white argument. It is not and it ought not to be treated that way.
The arguments against euthanasia usually start with the notion of the thin end of the wedge, sliding down the slippery slope; if we allow euthanasia, before we know it we will be spreading out of voluntary euthanasia to compulsory euthanasia and we will have a Nazi-type situation. That is absolute, complete and utter nonsense. That is to try to put it into a black-and-white argument and to resolve the debate in that way. To suggest that it is only the beginning of the degradation of morals, a situation where we will be able to dispose of our elderly, is absolute nonsense. When we put the legislation together we must ensure that that does not happen.
Tied up with that is the argument that it will become much easier for somebody to dispose of unwanted relatives - parents and grandparents who are elderly, infirm, perhaps incapacitated. Those are, if you like, the dangers; but they ought not dominate the debate. What we should say, wherever a debate occurs on euthanasia, is that we accept that safeguards need to be built into legislation to ensure that those things simply cannot happen.
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