Kevin Yuill writes:
Despite the crushing parliamentary defeat for the Assisted
Dying Bill last month, the right-to-die campaign continues.
But it’s no longer
a struggle fought out in the democratic arena; it’s now a guerrilla war. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rise of assisted-suicide bombers.
These are the individuals who kill themselves in a blaze of publicity, blasting
out emotional shrapnel in an effort to inflict maximum damage on those opposed
to legalising assisted dying.
In the past week, Simon Binner, a
UK citizen, press-released his suicide at the Eternal Spirit clinic in
Switzerland. Binner, who suffered from an aggressive form of motor neurone
disease, announced on LinkedIn that he had chosen to die on 19 October.
He used
the occasion to record a video with the British Humanist Association (BHA) in
which he called for assisted dying to be made legal in the UK.
He said that,
had it been legal, it would have allowed him to extend his life and spend one
last Christmas with his family.
There are obvious differences
between Binner, and others who have decided to use their deaths to publicise
the right-to-die cause, and terrorist suicide bombers.
Most importantly, the
individual committing assisted suicide lacks the murderous intent of a suicide
bombers. There are other differences, too.
Binner has been called ‘brave’ for
his actions, but this stretches the meaning of bravery beyond recognition. To
kill oneself to avoid future suffering may be understandable, but it is hardly
brave.
However, those who blow themselves up to further their cause cannot be
accused of lacking courage.
But there are similarities, too.
First, both suicide bombers and assisted-suicide bombers like Binner become
martyrs to very questionable causes.
The lives and deaths of suicides,
including the most intimate details, are used and distorted by propagandists
(in Binner’s case, the BHA) to further a particular agenda.
They are
transformed from active agents into victims of an ‘oppressive regime’ that
forced them to kill themselves.
So Binner, according to the BHA, is a victim of
an oppressive law, which ‘heaps unnecessary suffering and trauma on to families
like the Binners’.
Second, both suicide bombers and
assisted-suicide bombers are groomed.
Those who doubt this should read the
chilling account by Binner’s wife, Debbie, of how, having had initial qualms
about her husband’s planned suicide, she was convinced that his assisted death
was for the best by the director of the Eternal Spirit clinic.
According to
Debbie, the director asked ‘Do you want Simon to stay alive so you can have a
human pet?’ She says: ‘That put me in a very difficult position. Because did I
want Simon to stay alive just for me?’
Human pet? Is this really how we should view disabled
people?
The Eternal Spirit clinic effectively dismissed the Binners’ many happy
years of marriage, the tragedies and triumphs that marked their lives, and
reduced Simon Binner to the status of a dog or parakeet.
And third, both suicide bombers and
assisted-suicide bombers use their deaths for public, propagandistic ends.
After all, it was Binner himself who decided to take his own life. It was
Binner who decided that his suicide could be used to further the campaign for a
change in the law.
While normally it is difficult to judge the actions of
individuals who kill themselves, individuals who have politicised their deaths
are different.
They have laid out the reasoning for their acts, made themselves
part of a cause, and demanded that we support both their actions and their cause.
They are there to be publicly judged.
Sainted for a suicide
It is possible to see in suicide
bombers and assisted-suicide bombers a shared quest for significance.
As
philosopher and psychologist William James noted, ‘no matter what a man’s
frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if
he suffers it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates
him forever’.
Here, I think, we have an answer to the question, ‘Why couldn’t
he have committed suicide at home?’.
Suicide is legal and Binner had the means
and ability to make it happen. But martyrs are remembered not for their lives
but for why they died. To die simply to avoid the depredations of disease lacks
the significance of dying to further a cause.
We can expect many more
assisted-suicide bombers to be paraded in front of us over the coming years.
These tactics have always been important to organisations such as Dignity in
Dying and the British Humanist Association.
The undoubted suffering of those
who choose to end their days at Dignitas or the Eternal Spirit clinic lends an
emotional force to campaigns to legalise assisted dying.
How could anyone let
someone suffer outside the law when all they want is a peaceful death?, runs
the argument.
These highly emotional tactics,
complete with deathbed videos, have always covered over the gaping holes in the
logic of legalising assisted dying.
Why, for instance, should an act that
anyone can accomplish be seen as medical treatment? How can one base the
argument for legalising assisted suicide on autonomy, yet deny a perfectly
healthy 21-year-old the right to an assisted suicide?
No one wants to heap further misery
on the families of those who choose to travel to Switzerland to kill themselves
in a blaze of publicity.
But, sadly, these individuals have, through their
deaths, drawn public attention to their actions and cause. Their emotional
stories should not put their suicides beyond criticism.
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