By Dave Andrusko
Like many who’ve watched the slide down the slippery slope and off the cliff, I am amazed that every time a court strikes down laws against assisted suicide, the judges insist, as if it was an immutable law akin to gravity, that there will be no “abuses.”
That’s what took place Friday in Carter v. Canada, when the Supreme Court of Canada wiped out its law against assisted suicide. NRLC has already commented on the decision several times and carried particularly thoughtful critiques from others.
I would like to take another run at the 9-0 decision which is startling in its breadth and breathtaking in its naivety (or cynicism. Take your pick).
Let me focus on two far-reaching—and crucial—points in the decision.
First, this case was not about “difficult cases” in the sense that most people mean this: patients in intractable pain whose death is imminent. The justices were not focusing on people who are terminally ill, or even necessarily physically ill at all.
When the court talked about “enduring and intolerable suffering” it could easily be talking about patients who are clinically depressed and who no longer think life is worth living. Indeed this population—and those with serious disabilities—represent those groups most likely to exercise this “right”-or have it exercised for them!
So, the real “difficulty,” it would seem for the justices, is that there might be someone somewhere who has subjectively given up on life who might not be able to be assisted to die on his own terms.
Second, as Andrew Coyne pointed out,
The Court airily dismisses concerns that euthanasia will be expanded or abused, as it has been in those few jurisdictions where it has been legalized, as “anecdotal.”
Why the cavalier (and it is cavalier) dismissal? My guess is, if you were to inject them with truth serum, at least some would disagree that the kind of “expansion” or “abuses” seen in the Netherland and Belgium are bad at all. As Peter Saunders has observed
It is widely acknowledged that euthanasia is out of control in Belgium: a 500% increase in cases in ten years; one third involuntary; half not reported; euthanasia for blindness, anorexia and botched sex change operations; organ transplant euthanasia; plans to extend euthanasia to children and people with dementia.
How many of the justices would disagree with all of these? How about any of these?
And the other reason—getting back to my first paragraph—is an invincible conviction that “it can’t happen here.” If you’ve read some of Paul Russell’s brilliant commentary on the drive to bring assisted suicide to Australia that we’ve reprinted, you might recognize that sentiment.
In one of his articles, Paul quoted from a commentary by Australian academics Ben White and Lindy Willmott, who support euthanasia and assisted suicide, that appeared in the academic journal, “The Conversation.” The quote was so telling I went to the journal and read the entry in its entirety.
Their argument was insincere from the first word to the last, filled with bogus assurances, phony “walls” of protection, and a sappy litany of the many reasons Australia is different. Here’s the operative explanation why the Wild West behavior on display in Belgium wouldn’t come to Australia:
Belgium is literally on the other side of the world in terms of this issue, due in part to a different culture and history in this field. Australia is in a different place and asking different questions.
Sure enough, “on the other side of the world,” the Supreme Court talked about how the “medico-legal culture” of Belgium is different than Canada’s.
However no post on “assurances” and “safeguards” would be complete unless I quoted one more time from Coyne’s incisive analysis. (The emphases are mine).
But it is not in the administration of the law that I fear we will see the “slippery slope” at work so much as it is in its interpretation. Perhaps the Court’s confidence that “safeguards” can be devised that will prevent the spread of euthanasia beyond the competently adult and the clearly consenting is well placed. But there can be no safeguard against the Court’s own future decisions.
Some day, someone is going to bring a case before the Court arguing that children with an incurable disease and in “intolerable” pain should also have the right to assisted suicide, perhaps with their parents’ consent. Is the Court really going to condemn them to endure years of excruciating pain until they are of age? Likewise, is it really prepared to leave the mentally incompetent to suffer unbearably, when with the signature of a legal guardian they could be released? Or if personal autonomy is all, why should a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” be required? Isn’t it enough that you want to be dead, but need someone to help?
At that point the Court will be caught, helpless before its own logic. And by then, so will we.
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