Charles Amos studied Political Theory at the University of Oxford and writes The Musing Individualist Substack.
In the coming months Parliament will debate whether or not assisted dying should be legalised; a practise which currently holds a 14-year prison sentence for those who conduct it. Liberals of all stripes must fully support Kim Leadbeater’s bill. Respect demands the actual torture ensured by prohibiting assisted dying ends: People must be free to die in their own way at a time of their own choosing.
Concerns about pressure on old people from family mitigating the voluntariness of their choices relies on a fictitious understanding of it, and, the paternalism invoked to protect some people against bad choices is just as implausible too.
Prohibiting assisted dying is to torture people.
Imagine you accidentally sit down on a natural bamboo plant. Unfortunately, due to your medical conditions, you cannot move off of it without help. Failing getting off of it, the shoot will painfully grow up through you until your untimely death. Were a Japanese soldier to deliberately guard you and stop people from getting you off of it multiple times, I think we would say he tortured you. This is because torture is defined as inflicting severe suffering, and, the Japanese soldier causes the bamboo to put you through massive pain insofar as he stops your assisted escape from it. Stopping assisted dying is analogous to the bamboo case as state officials stop people from escaping from excruciating pain, and, hence, cause severe suffering, i.e., torture.
A natural principle of human respect dictates people should always be free of such gross inhumanity. This moral principle is not subject to the fickle fancies of democracies, rather, it remains constant throughout time and location. It ensures each of us can pursue our own flourishing in our own way. Crucially, this flourishing is very personal such that a choice for A will be beneficial while the same choice for B will not.
Denying choice via the violence of the state will diminish this flourishing. Talking of flourishing in a discussion of death may appear odd, yet, a good death can be an integral part to avoiding a bad life; ask any dog owner whose said goodbye to their fluffy friend and they’ll agree.
The central objection to my liberal case is the choice of assisted dying is too likely to be unvoluntary due to the potential pressure from family members and medical professionals; stopping a number of murders is implied to trump stopping severe suffering. It is argued being pressured into choosing death is not voluntary because it is not the true choice of the individual; they don’t really want to be killed.
Isaiah Berlin puts the ideal condition of choice eloquently: ‘I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s acts of will’. It should be admitted by both sides of this debate that many people will make voluntary choices though.
Two rebuttals can be made to this objection.
First, why should the unvoluntary choices of a few people warrant prohibiting a practice where the vast majority of people make voluntary choices. Some people are defrauded in buying second hand cars; an unvoluntary choice occurs, but we don’t take that as sufficient reason to ban the whole market. Second, the understanding of voluntariness outlined above is implausible, and, rejecting it requires replacing it with an understanding of voluntariness which does not count pressure from other people as undermining it. Therefore, the liberal case for assisted dying stands.
There are many choices we all think are voluntary which occur solely due to pressure from other people. If everyone at a big table orders starters, some people will order a starter just to fit in too, many men have married at the altar despite their truest wishes because they didn’t want to spoil the ceremony, disappoint people, or, embarrass themselves. Women have tried to have a son simply because of the shunning of their husbands when they have failed to deliver. Some men during the First World War signed up just to avoid the white feather. Since these choices are all obviously voluntary, and, the outlined conception classes them as unvoluntary, the outlined conception is false. Assisted dying cannot be ruled out on the basis pressured old people make an unvoluntary choice then.
I imagine conservatives will scoff at me comparing the choice of ordering tomato soup to assisted dying: ‘There completely different; being pressured into death is the end of your life, getting tomato soup you don’t really want is a minor inconvenience!’
I doubt they’d prohibit pressuring people into joining the army though.
Consider this too. A man has been amorously dancing with a girl at a nightclub; she’s had a couple of drinks and she’s into it. When the club closes at 2am she realises she’s missed the last bus back. The man offers to drive her home, but only if he can have his way with her. The woman doesn’t really want this, yet, a taxi would cost £300, so, reluctantly, she agrees to have sex with him solely to avoid the taxi fare. This bloke is not a gentleman and the woman is not a lady, but the pressure on her to have sex clearly doesn’t ensure an unvoluntary choice on her part. No rape occurs. Yet an understanding of voluntariness which states pressure can undermine it might have to state a rape does occur. This is false.
What I think the conservative comment is really drawn to is paternalism, i.e., restricting the freedom of people for their own good. I concede permitting assisted dying will result in some people choosing to die against their best interests. People should be free to make bad choices however. The state has no right to stop us from marrying the wrong person, choosing a bad career or having kids against our best interests. As J. S Mill wrote in On Liberty:
‘The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.’
The actual torture ensured by the ban on assisted dying must be stopped. No longer must individuals be imprisoned in their own skin and forced by state officials to live a life of suffering they’d rather end in a flash. Concerns about the voluntariness of the choices of old people rest on a false conception of it, and, besides, dodge the crucial question of trading off the possibly unvoluntary choices of a few against the voluntary choices of the vast majority.
It’s time to free man from the misery of an excruciatingly painful death: It’s time to legalise assisted dying.
