Should you give a gun to a person who tells you they want to die? What if they tell you that they are depressed and in pain?
What if they tell you they don’t want to be a burden on the people in their life? Or what if they tell you they’re terminally ill and so they want to end their life on their own terms, with autonomy over the way they die?
Eleven states are now handing over the “gun” through the legalization of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). But we’re calling it death with dignity.
The Death with Dignity website makes this statement:
“We believe individuals with terminal illness have a right to die with the same autonomy and agency in which they lived their lives. Our work arises out of deep respect and empathy for this most intimate and personal freedom.”
In other words, dignity equals autonomy.
Our healthcare system can perform feats that border on the miraculous, and the options for treating pain are plentiful and sophisticated. But death is still inevitable, and the best that our control-obsessed culture can do is to grasp the power for determining when and how one dies.
Society argues that to not have this kind of autonomy must be some sort of infringement on our rights. Essentially, it’s “undignified” to be subject to nature.
The 2023 Oregon Death with Dignity Act Annual Reports list that (“as in previous years”) the three most frequently reported reasons for utilizing MAID were loss of autonomy (92%), decreasing ability to participate in enjoyable activities (88%), and loss of dignity (64%). Our world has somehow deemed it “undignified” to receive care and die naturally.
After a battle with cancer and the ravaging effects of chemotherapy, my grandfather, Tony, passed away in August of 2022, at home, in his sleep. Caring for him had been the all-absorbing task of my entire family during those last few weeks. He was bed-ridden, needed help eating and drinking, and could barely speak during those final days. We had to change his diaper and move his body. This was a multi-person task, every hour to prevent bedsores. It was hard to watch my once energetic grandfather be reduced to that level of dependence. But our work was only the just response of gratitude for his love as well as respect for his intrinsic dignity as a person.
My grandfather may have been stripped of his control over the functions of his body. But he did exercise his autonomy in the way he chose to react to his suffering. While he was still lucid, he made sure that his affairs were in order to provide for his wife and family. As a man of deep faith, he was constantly in prayer.
Even after he could no longer speak, he would give me his signature wink – the one he always gave while sneaking a fresh cookie. It was a glimpse of how he met his suffering with his same cheerful spirit. We don’t truly have much control over what happens to us in life, but my grandfather witnessed to his family that we do control how we respond. That is the real gift of autonomy. No death, no matter how miserable, takes away the choice to respond with courage.
This means that caretakers must inspire that courage through real compassion. For the proponents of MAID, the arguments based on compassion center around the termination of pain. That’s not compassion, that’s the sort of sentiment we feel when putting down injured animals. Compassion means “to suffer with” – to accompany someone in their passion.
In an article in “Public Discourse,” Daniel Trippie writes:
“Genuine compassion acknowledges our inherently social nature and recognizes that our responses to suffering shape not just the individual being helped, but the one administering the aid. Therefore, when we redefine compassion to include ending life rather than walking with people through suffering, we alter not only individual caregivers but the moral foundation of our collective social bonds.”
We cannot expect strong relationships without forming the virtues that create them: charity, gratitude, and compassion.
With genuine compassion, the patient’s suffering is made easier, not merely materially, but emotionally and mentally. To suffer is one thing, to suffer alone is a spiritually deeper level of hardship.
I could do very little to ease the pain of my grandfather, but I knew that simply being there meant a lot to him. It was a reminder to him that no matter what happened to his body, he was loved, valued, and treated with dignity.
And what about the dignity of our medical system? Can we ask doctors who have taken the Hippocratic Oath to deliberately end lives? Currently, the requirements for MAID demand that the individual with a terminal illness be at least 18, capable of making and communicating health care decisions, and given a six month life expectancy. The physicians are the ones who determine whether the patient satisfies these requirements, particularly the last.
Doctors are not soothsayers, and we shouldn’t ask them to be. And does one or two conversations with a physician determine that the person is making a completely rational decision unaffected by the natural phase of depression and fear that comes from hearing a terminal diagnosis? Can we know that he is completely uncoerced by family members or the desire to stop being a burden, or the desire to escape a lonely existence in an abusive nursing home?
These not-so-“autonomous” decisions are going to become a serious battle for pro-lifers. Beyond verbal arguments and policy work, there are cultural shifts that should happen. MAID thrives in societies where the elderly and their caregivers are isolated.
It’s a culture of strong societal bonds that will be the most effective defense against MAID. This means everything from communities that provide the mental, physical, and emotional support caregivers need to perform a task that (I know from experience) is extremely draining, to shaking the fear around visiting nursing homes.
Let’s combat false compassion with the real thing.
