Brad Littlejohn: The rise of assisted suicide

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, December 4th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Last Friday, U.K. Parliament moved a step closer to joining countries like Belgium and Canada in legalizing assisted suicide. WORLD Opinions contributor Brad Littlejohn says it’s not hard to see why.

BRAD LITTLEJOHN: Since Parliament last debated—and decisively rejected—legalizing assisted suicide in 2015, several other Western countries have embraced some form of it with grim results. In most cases, what was sold as a strictly controlled practice with very strict criteria has begun to broaden into a blank check. In Canada, the program is known as Medical Assistance In Dying—or MAID. Deaths there grew thirteenfold in just six years after legalization—making up four percent of all deaths nationwide. Once intended only for terminally ill and grievously suffering patients has become the go-to option for anyone tired of living…or deemed unworthy of life.

Despite such cautionary tales, support for euthanasia continues to grow. Most frequently, the practice is justified as a compassionate antidote to the intolerable suffering that accompanies some deaths, and indeed, no one can be unmoved by such suffering. The timing is odd, however—why is it that support for assisted dying has ballooned in exactly the same era and in the same places that medicine has succeeded most in mitigating end-of-life suffering? Two centuries ago, no one could expect to have their passing eased by morphine, and yet assisted suicide was almost unthinkable in the West. What has changed? At least four trends have contributed to this cultural transformation.

First, a series of changes in biotechnology and bioethics have encouraged us to blur the boundary between “begetting” and “making” human life. With the advent of easy contraception, we began to think of the creation of a new human child as fundamentally a matter of choice, and if a matter of choice, a matter of technique. Human will, aided by scientific know-how, could be employed either to “make” a baby or to stop one being made. That which we have the power to make, however, logically, we must have the power to unmake.

Second, and relatedly, we have elevated “choice” to a self-justifying idol. One British member of Parliament in support of the bill writes: “Life is precious. But so is choice.” Arguing that “choice” is more precious. This mindset follows from decades of rhetoric on autonomy that has become endemic in our culture: “My body, my choice.”

Third, technology has conditioned us to look for the easy way out. Even as medicine has helped to dramatically reduce the suffering of illness, it has also discouraged us from learning how to bear suffering well. Even as transportation and communications technologies have vastly reduced waiting times, they have deprived us of ever learning the virtue of patience—the suffering of bearing time. As a culture accustomed to instant gratification and painless escape steadily ages, the pressure for an easy exit from life itself will only grow.

Fourth, most deaths now take place in hospitals or hospices, not at home, and often with only a doctor or nurse present. Today, more and more people die alone because more and more people live alone. Family bonds have been attenuated, and close friendships have become increasingly uncommon. As technology multiplies our “connections” with others, it weakens and dilutes each bond. A common theme in patients seeking medically assisted suicide is loneliness and isolation.

Even as the body count of wrongful deaths piles up, popular pressure for euthanasia is only likely to increase in coming years, and it is not hard to see why. All the assumptions and values of our society point in that direction. If Christians are to have a chance of holding the line in looming legislative battles, they will have to fundamentally challenge the culture of convenience, choice, and self-creation that has made the campaign for self-destruction so plausible today.

I’m Brad Littlejohn.

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