personal responses. Assisted suicide is illegal over here but just like
cannabis I can just hop on a plane and get what's illegal here legally
elsewhere.
The Swiss have a good system set up. There's not huge numbers of people
queuing to use facilities like Dignitas or Exit. Dignitas is the only
one that accepts people from other countries though. It also accepts
people who've had mental health problems.
I have the option of a peaceful option and one I can plan towards. It
doesn't have to be messy and though I can use a method with a very high
chance of success there's nothing like the reliability of the methods
used at Dignitas. I assume it's a quiet, peaceful death and one where I
can have a period of contemplation before I die. My organs should be ok
for donation, what's left of them after the way I've treated my body.
And as I look forward to that day I contemplate other matters. Not the
suffering of my friends and family which is what a decent person would
be thinking about in these circumstances. I think about the question of
whether it should truly be a right?
In an abstract sense of course it is a right. All I truly own is my life
and while that too can be taken it's no one else's property but mine. My
life is my own to end.
But then comes the problems of mental illness and temporary states of
willingness to die. I've left a four year time between now and when I
die however there have been other times when I have acted in emotion or
haste and attempted suicide.
I think most people will want to see what I'm doing as a sign of mental
illness but it isn't. They'll want to pathologise it so they can modify
my thinking. It is compassion in a way but it is also fundamental to
what the mental health system is wrongly used for.
It can be rational to want to die. It can also be a response to life
events but one that won't change. Fundamentally it is my right to decide
and mental illness can't be used as a weapon to control me if I disagree
with consensus thinking or attitudes so that all my decisions and
actions that are considered undesired can be pathologised.
I think about this idea of the value of a right to die for everyone
because it's an important question. People may not understand but that
doesn't give them the right to control my life or control my death.
But then this right means people die. It is their own free will but they
still die. I'm against that sort of thing at a fundamental level too.
If it boils down to practicality then the practicality is 6000 people a
year successfully take their life in the UK and over 10% of people who
have had their life terminated at Dignitas were from the UK (this is
true as a of a few years ago at least). In fact the UK suicide rate may
be fractionally higher if the Oxford suicide research team don't take
into account the deaths at Dignitas. They provide a very important
sample for research and perhaps a unique opportunity.
Just like the UK law on drugs, it's not about practicalities though.
It's about a dominant sense of morality that means drugs are illegal as
is assisted suicide.
Both these laws will change though.
No comments:
Post a Comment