Now, I apologise to people who have heard my views on this subject before, but this piece really wound me up. And this annoyance started before I'd had even read the piece with just its title.
I'm not saying that Jane Campbell doesn't have the right to an opinion, or to expressing that opinion. This is also obviously a subject that she has experience of and that has personal resonance. However, neither of these things give her the right to claim to speak for all disabled and terminally ill people. In her opinion the majority of these people might be anti further relaxing of assisted suicide laws, but this is not a fact, unless she has in fact carried out a survey of everyone in the United Kingdom who are either disabled or terminally ill. In which case I would have liked some actual statistics to back up her assertion that she is speaking for 'hundreds' of other people, who she is suggesting to be the majority.
I also think that just because a majority, if we agree that this is so, want the laws not to be changed, it is a law which gives people a choice, and therefore if even a minority of people are in favour why not change the law? It's not going to force everyone with these conditions to be euthanised, its simply going to legally and in a dignified manner give the opportunity to those who want it. There's a huge level of fear involved in objections to changing the laws, and unfounded ones as euthanasia programmes have been successful in other countries. This is not Nazi Germany, laws can be regulated and controlled, doctors aren't just going to go around overdosing unwilling victims. She argues that giving in to this minority will mean that the living loose benefits, that they stop fighting. This things need to be addressed, but when she is calling so strongly for her, and other's voices to be heard, why does she deny the voices of those terminally ill and disabled people who are in favour? Do we just ignore them rather than looking for solutions to the other issues?
Campbell's argument centres on the fact that those the law 'is intended to benefit' aren't in favour of it, but people can develop terminal illnesses and disabilities, and do we now only get a democratic say in things that utterly directly affect us? In which case no man should ever have the right to air an opinion on abortion again, or decisions should be made about it based simply on a vote amongst women.
She also seems to think that people are going to be "killed-off" as soon as their diagnosed, cast off as having no useful purpose and gotten rid of. The individual decides when they want to die. This isn't about not trying to give people a good quality of life, its about trying to give people back their humanity. If someone feels they can go on fighting then great, its not compulsory. But Campbell also seems to ignore the fact that there isn't a fight for some people. There isn't hope. There aren't miracles. Some people suffer from illnesses they WILL quickly die of, and in an awful condition.
People aren't going to stop looking for cures, for ways to slow down diseases, to help people live. People aren't going to stop fighting because its easier to give up. As the programmes in Holland, Switzerland and Oregon an all work more relaxed assisted suicide laws will simply allow those who want to, when they feel appropriate to end their life with a dignity that their illness or disability has often taken from them. Not all will want or choose it, but for those, even if it is those few, who do, they deserve the right to choose. We all deserve the right to choose, and unfortunately it might be a choice some of us have to make, or are involved in making. This is not a decision to only or mainly be made by those who it directly affects now, their voices have to be heard too, but so do other people's. And it is a decision we all need to make. If laws at the very least allow people to help loved ones go abroad to die without fear of prosecution it will mean that people can die in their own name.
NOTES FROM A SMALL TOWN...
This week in Shrewsbury I saw...
Nuns pointing excitedly to the Micheal Jackson commemorative issue of OK in the Post Office.
A man who was either standing bizarrely close (nose touching glass) to window of an art shop, or trying to surreptitiously take a picture through it of a naked nymph statue.
