Over the past day or so there has been a lot of coverage online about Sir Terry Pratchett’s Dimbleby Lecture (text here). Sir Terry is, of course, a good friend of many people I know. He’s also very clearly a very brave man. It is no wonder that the SF community loves him. Support for his position is overwhelming, but it is not 100%.
Out in New Zealand lives a friend of mine called Nic Steenhout (who I only know via Twitter). Nic happens to need a wheelchair to get about, and he doesn’t support Sir Terry’s position.
In case you didn’t click through, that’s not because he wants to deny Sir Terry the right to die. He’s perfectly OK with suicide. It is “physician assisted” suicide that worries him, because like any other form of government bureaucracy it is open to abuse.
In Sir Terry’s case I don’t think many people would disagree that his illness, if not treated, will eventually make his life not worth living. By the end he probably won’t be Sir Terry any more, because everything that made him who he is will have been eaten away by the disease. His right to avoid that fate is pretty much unarguable. But the debate about assisted suicide is about much more than Alzheimer’s. It is about whether or not people are deemed worth keeping alive, about whether people have right to life.
That might seem odd to you, but it doesn’t to Nic because, as he said on Twitter this morning, he has had people say to his face, “if I had to be in a wheelchair I’d kill myself.” The implication being that people in wheelchairs are somehow useless, a burden on society, people who don’t deserve to live. There’s nothing in what Sir Terry proposes that would give any doctor the right to terminate someone’s life just because they are confined to a wheelchair, but that isn’t going to stop people putting pressure on those who are. Just look at the ferocity of the heathcare debate in the US. Many of those opposed to government-funded heathcare are very clear about their views: those who get sick and can’t afford treatment should be left to die, society should not help them.
It goes further than that as well. Any debate over suicide ought to look at those social groups where suicide is most common and see what changes in the law might mean for them. And one group where suicide is depressingly common is trans people. In many cases, of course, trans people kill themselves because they can no longer stand the violence and abuse directed at them by the public, and because they feel that they can never have a “normal” life. Yet these are not people who have any physical disability. Often they are very intelligent and capable. They are people who are socially disabled, people who have been defined as useless, or even a threat, because other people don’t like them. People whom the Pope claims are a greater threat to the planet than climate change. It is no wonder that many trans people end up thinking that their lives are not worth living.
You really don’t have a handle on the idea of “assisted suicide” until you have had a family member tell you that it is your duty to “do the right thing” and kill yourself so that you don’t bring any further shame on him or her.
None of this has any bearing on Sir Terry’s individual right to control his own life. In his position I’d want the right to die with dignity too. I might even be grateful for some assistance. But the idea of government-sanctioned panels run by doctors worries me. And given how people in wheelchairs tend to get treated I can see why Nic is worried too.
