Dorothy’s words ”” ”˜It is quality of life that counts, not number of days’ ”” ring in my ears.
The current law fails to address the fundamental question of why we should force terminally ill patients to go on in unbearable pain and with little quality of life.
It is the magnitude of their suffering that has been preying on my mind as the discussion over the right to die has intensified.
The fact is that I have changed my mind. The old philosophical certainties have collapsed in the face of the reality of needless suffering.
It was the case of Tony Nicklinson that exerted the deepest influence on me. Here was a dignified man making a simple appeal for mercy, begging that the law allow him to die in peace, supported by his family.
Read it all from the Daily Mail.
It is, surely, the mark of a gentleman that on retiring from high office, he does not pronounce on matters which are the concern of his successor.
Were Dame Cicely Saunders alive today, I wonder what she would make of Lord Carey’s views. Having spent some time at St. Christopher’s Hospice and Spencer House in the early 80’s, I saw how dying people could die a death with dignity and without much pain. I spoke with Anglican clergy and physicians who would have been deeply concerned by Carey’s embrace of assisted suicide. Carey seemed incapable of such outspokenness when he was Archbishop of Canterbury.
Remember that this is the Archbishop who pushed women’s ordination in the CofE, prophesying wrongly that it would re-invigorate the church. Now when the church is on the verge of going over the cliff on that one, he’s urging it to find yet another jumping-off point from the faith and practice of the universal church.
Loose canon and deck come to mind.
An argument that is almost entirely anecdotal and experiential and whose sole theological content seemed to be – Jesus cared for people so doctors should be allowed to kill people.
We have a good idea where this will go – look at the Netherlands and Belgium -it ends with the mentally ill and disabled kids being killed for exactly the same reason – “to end their suffering”. When your theological argument ends up justifying the killing of a powerless two day old Down Syndrome child, one ought to wonder if one has quite understood what Christ’s “compassion” means.