There is more to life than getting pleasure and avoiding pain. Sometimes life is about how to bear the pain. What dying people need help with is not ending their lives, but finding the meaning of their suffering.
The following article was published in the Dayton Daily News, August 23, 2024.
Killing a human being is a terrible thing, though permissible in exceptional cases such as defending ourselves, others, or our country. But some Ohioans want to add another exception: to help those who are dying and suffering to kill themselves.
Ray Marcano urges two points in favor of “death with dignity”:
It avoids the agony of dying from disease.
It respects patients’ rights to make their own health care decisions.
But we do not have a right to do what is wrong. Unless avoiding agony establishes that such killings are not wrong, respecting “rights” is irrelevant. So let’s consider whether avoiding the pain of a natural death justifies the patient’s killing himself.
People will be inclined to find point 1 persuasive if they accept philosophical hedonism, the idea that good is pleasure and evil is pain, and getting the one and avoiding the other is the proper goal of life.
But hedonism is false.
If hedonism were true, the following acts would be equally bad. (a) A mad scientist, Kate, applies a “treatment” to a newborn child, Abel, depriving him of half his ability to experience pleasure and pain. Or (b) Kate waits for Abel to grow up, to the middle of his natural span of years, then kills him. Either way, Abel is deprived of the same amount of pleasures and pains, so according to hedonism, both would be equally bad. But surely the killing is far worse. Therefore hedonism is false. There is some good in human life beyond the pleasures it brings, some good that remains in spite of pains.
Further, we ought to do what we can to prevent veterans’ suicides. Over 6,000 veterans took their lives in 2021, many suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet did not these veterans take their lives because they found them unbearable? If we ought to prevent veterans’ suicides, doesn’t that mean that their lives are valuable in spite of unbearable pain? If the prospect of a many-years, possibly lifelong agony does not justify veterans’ ending their lives, how does it justify suicide by the mortally sick with the same prospect for only six months? (PTSD is treatable, but results are mixed.)
“If there is meaning in life at all,” writes Viktor Frankl, “then there must be a meaning in suffering.” Reflecting on Kate and Abel and our duty to veterans, we know human life has value independent of pleasure and pain.
But how do we find that meaning? Buffon labored on with his Natural History through three years of excruciating pain before dying of kidney failure. Others, faced with impending death, turn from pursuing work and wealth to spend time with loved ones. There is no one way. Some of us unite our suffering with Christ’s, “offering it up” as a redemptive act of love (cf. Colossians 1:24).
Rhetoric supporting physician-assisted suicide abounds with euphemisms. Even the phrase “death with dignity” obscures the fact that we are talking about self-slaughter. “A short time after he took his medication, he quietly passed away” sounds so innocent. But medicine is to heal, not kill. Say rather: “He took his poison.”
Think, then, three times:
Life isn’t only about getting pleasure and avoiding pain. Sometimes it’s about how to bear the pain. What the dying person needs help with is not ending his life, but finding the meaning of his suffering.
We don’t have a right to do wrong. Relief of suffering does not justify killing a human being.
Beware fair words that hide foul meaning.
Compassion is good: true compassion does not kill.
The weekend after this appeared, the Dayton Daily News published a letter:
In regard to Gregory Weber’s column on euthanasia, no one has proposed that everyone with a terminal disease be forcibly euthanized. People suffering from terminal diseases most certainly have a right to make their own personal decisions when it comes to treatment and the end of their own life. The key words here are their own life, Mr. Weber. It is their choice as an individual and between them and their God if they believe in one, no one else. There is no comparison between a depressed, otherwise healthy veteran where there is a possibility of recovery or treatment and someone dying of a fatal disease, for instance, Lewy Body Dementia or cancer. If your personal religious beliefs dictate suffering as a redemptive act of love, than by all means follow your beliefs. By saying “we don’t have the right to do wrong” you are not involved in other people’s end of life decisions nor should you be. We do not live in a theocracy.
—Mary Utz, Dayton
To which I offered the following response:
I thank Mary Utz for commenting on my article on physician-assisted suicide. I was well aware that no one had proposed that all dying people should be forcibly euthanized; I did not suggest that anyone had. Nor did I say that everyone should practice redemptive suffering; I said that it was one way to find the meaning of our suffering, and I mentioned two others. And I did not suggest that we live in a theocracy; my argument was secular throughout. So much for the misinterpretations.
Ms. Utz asserts without argument that we each have a right to end our own lives. That is precisely what I was arguing against. I am sorry that my analogy with veteran suicides did not resonate with her. Analogies are not the strongest form of argument, but it is not accurate to say there is “no comparison.” The comparison was that some of our veterans with PTSD or traumatic brain injury face a lifetime of more and longer suffering than people dying of, say, cancer in six months. Or do we think mental suffering less real than physical pain? Yes, there is hope of treatment and recovery, but then, some people expected to die in six months don’t. Whether my analogy is valid, each reader must decide.
By the way, the proposed “medical aid in dying” requires patients to be mentally competent, so it would not work for those with Lewy Body or any other form of Dementia.
The Dayton Daily News declined to publish my response, because “We generally do not allow responses from the same author after the initial column has been published.” What a pity. No chance for dialog.