Morality?

Richard Harries, Baron Harries of Pentregarth, retired Bishop of Oxford, talks a good deal of sense about many issues. For instance, he is outspoken on the dangers and evils of the creationist movement currently spreading outward from the United States. However, his anti-euthanasia arguments are unconvincing. Baron Harries accepts that there are circumstances under which a person may wish to die in order to avoid pointless suffering, but he stops short of sanctioning the right of doctors or others to take the life of terminally ill patients who no longer wish to live. First, he objects on the grounds that human autonomy is not as important as the collective wishes of, say, the patient's family. But surely the patient's voice should be heard at least as loudly as the voices of those who are not suffering? And surely, if the family members truly feel for their ailing loved one, they will respect, share and desire to uphold their wish? Otherwise, they would be saying, "Yes, we know you are terminally ill and in terrible pain, but you really must be guided by us and continue to suffer because it's against our principles to pander to human autonomy." Baron Harries doesn't see it this way. Perhaps his morals have been distorted by his theology.

Baron Harries' second objection is related to, although distinct from, his first. He argues that the family could make the sick patient's last few weeks on Earth "a beautiful time" which, were the patient to be dead, they could not share. But from whose perspective is the time beautiful? Surely it is not to escape beauty that the patient wishes to die. Surely the beauty lies only in the minds of the family, who prefer a world in which their loved one is living, to one in which he/she is dead. What arrant selfishness on the part of the family! "OK, our loved one, we know you are suffering terribly but we insist that you continue to do so because we are enjoying our beautiful time with you very much." That would be a very strange kind of love.

Finally Baron Harries makes the point that to dispatch a loved one from the here and now, by helping them to end their life, would be to send them a clear message that their presence in the world is no longer valued. How presumptuous! Surely, refusal to assist the patient in his/her wish to die sends out a much stronger message: "Your wishes, even though you are the one suffering and we are not, are less important than ours, so you'll have to lump it and continue to suffer."

Baron Harries says that his objections to euthanasia are not motivated by religion in the sense that the old argument that "only God can take life" is. But his apparent inability to see the immorality of his own stance begs an explanation. I suggest that the explanation lies in his failure to subject his own morals to critical examination: a failure shared by many religious apologists. I think such people feel something like this: "I am a thoroughly virtuous person, my virtue stemming from my religious beliefs, so I do not need to examine my morals. They must be OK or I wouldn't be a religious person. So I can say whatever I like that sounds reasonable without having to think in depth about it." I think that such a feeling is a very common symptom of a religious mindset.

To be fair to Baron Harries, he adds that palliative care has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years to the extent that fewer and fewer patients find themselves in intolerable agony. Modern pain management regimes and up-to-date hospices have enhanced the quality of life of the terminally ill. But that doesn't alter the perspective of those who still find their lives intolerable and with zero prospects. If palliative care, however marvellous, is failing them, then do they deserve to have matters taken completely out of their hands and placed in the hands of those who value an abstract principle more highly than a person's freedom to choose?