We’re Better Off Loved

‘B etter off dead?”

“I don’t think I am.”

Liz Carr spoke these words last year as she accepted an award from the Royal Television Society for a BBC documentary she wrote and presented, whose title is that first phrase. She’s an actress and a disability-rights activist and has been able to use her platform to give voice to those who would not otherwise have one. Which is critical. Because once assisted suicide, which Carr has been fighting against, becomes more of the rule than the exception for medicine in the West, there will often be no coroner and no questions. That’s how one member of the British House of Commons put it, warning that so-called mercy killings could rise if assisted suicide becomes the norm, and we wouldn’t even know to be alarmed because there would be little oversight or reason to investigate whether there had been coercion — or worse.

But here’s a critical question: Could the mere availability of assisted suicide be a degree of coercion? In many cases in which it has been used, patients have reported their wish not to be a burden rather than to end their suffering from intense pain. In fact, we know pain often isn’t the issue. We have palliative care for that. Once killing by doctors becomes acceptable, it will likely happen even when it’s not explicitly requested — that’s what happens when you start erring on the side of death.

The Guardian recently told the tale of a married elderly couple in Australia who chose assisted suicide for themselves. She had a degenerative spinal condition. He had, among other health issues, panic attacks. Look, I’ve had panic attacks. They are not fun. They can be, in fact, terrifying, and even debilitating, but they are also treatable, and there are plenty of aids and solutions to explore before taking such an extreme measure. Perhaps the man sought a semblance of control; to take a prescription and die with his wife. Is this supposed to be romance? Are we a few years away from the first MAiD (medical aid in dying, advocates’ preferred euphemism) rom-com? Their decision, their terms, their timing — together — is how such stories are presented. But that’s all a delusion. Not one of us will ever be fully in control of his or her life or death. Neither, after all, is our idea. We exist for reasons beyond ourselves. Everything else is a response to the fact that we are alive — and to that other inherent fact: that we will die.

In New York, where the threat of assisted-suicide legislation has hovered for years, the state senate just had a pathetically short debate about the issue. Leading advocates could always count on the Empire State to ultimately give in. One member who voted for the bill made the arrogant, ignorant assertion that the practice would simply not be abused in New York, even as some of his colleagues admitted on the floor that they were “troubled” about the track record similar legislation has had in other jurisdictions. It’s almost as if, once you’ve devalued human life, you’re more prone to allow murder for the sake of convenience.

One ad posted on social media by an opponent of the legislation in England had a young, attractive woman expressing how she does not want to be a burden to others. Who wants to be a burden to anyone? But giving someone the opportunity to love you is a gift. The campaign for assisted suicide on both sides of the pond is not about unmanageable pain. It’s about making others’ lives more convenient by eliminating the patient.

In New York last Monday, two elderly women joined mostly pro-life opponents of assisted suicide in a walkway in the Albany statehouse. There were doctors, families, nuns, a Franciscan friar, and the two outliers, who fit in all the same. Their signs and T-shirts indicated they were “pro-choice” and “progressive” and yet against assisted suicide. It was awesome to see them there — their presence made you do a double-take. “So, you’re for abortion, but against assisted suicide?” I heard them being asked. “Yes. Exactly.” One pro-lifer — I suspect he wasn’t the only one — found common ground with them on “choice”: once murder is legal, it becomes the expectation. Even the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a progressive hero, said as much on abortion. Advocate though she may have been for the legality of abortion, she saw what it did to a culture. But one Democrat in the assembly, who had already voted for the assisted-suicide legislation, dismissed the two lovely women with disgust. There was no sisterly rapport between them. “Ridiculous!” she said, as she walked by fast, shaking her head. “They make no sense!” she said, looking at me (because I was the closest human, not because my anti-state-sanctioned-suicide sign was a welcome door).

In England, the prospect of assisted suicide for minors seemed to be a step too far, as the House of Commons voted in favor of a safeguard prohibiting health care providers from discussing the practice with anyone under 18. I think the appropriate phrase is: Thank God for small favors. And yet, it is a step in the right direction — it might help us realize how extreme the culture of death is. It’s one thing to want to know that people who suffer have options, it’s another to recoil at the proposition that we can love one another better — and with ever better technology. That has to be the road we take.

Our choices on these matters reveal what we really think about the very meaning and value of life. We are better off loved. Killing out of convenience isn’t even cheap grace. It’s murder. Call it mercy all you want — there is no mercy for anyone in lying. Loving in the agony of suffering is the harder and, indeed, the merciful way.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.