The Marie Fleming
case has got blanket coverage in the media in recent months, but last week saw
a particular peak after the Supreme Court turned down her application.
Saturday’s Irish Times carried two separate stories, one an interview with Marie
Fleming’s daughter and the other with her partner, decrying the Supreme Court
judgment. “The State spared no resource in denying Marie a dignified death,” is
the headline on the interview with Tom Curran, Marie Fleming’s partner.
That is one way of
looking at it. The other way of looking at it is to say the State spared no
resource in protecting the rights of its citizens, which is exactly what the
State should be doing.
All this is very
tough on Marie Fleming, of course. She’s miserable and in pain and will be
until she dies. Nobody disputes that, and if death came to her tomorrow, while
her friends would grieve and mourn, no-one would wish it hadn’t come later. But
whenever death does come, Marie Fleming will die. That is certain. It’s
impossible to deny someone the right to die, because dying isn’t a right. It’s
an obligation. There’s a difference.
A right is
something you can choose not to exercise. For Marie Fleming to be denied the
right to die is impossible. We all going to die. Even if the State wanted to
deny Marie Fleming that “right”, it couldn’t. The single fundamental,
undeniable truth about life is that it ends.
What the Marie
Fleming case is about is whether or not someone has the right to decide how,
when and where they’re going to die, and that’s a completely different thing.
It doesn’t fit a headline as neatly as “right to die,” of course, and neither
does it give the commentariat a chance to show the endless depths of its
compassion. But as the question of whether or not a person has the right to
choose the circumstances of their own death is the issue, let’s look at it for
a while.
There are two
points at issue here. The first is whether or not someone should decide when
his or her own life ends, rather than let nature take its inevitable course. If
you accept that notion – and it’s a big if – the next question is then to
decide on what basis that decision is made.
If you are of the
opinion that a person should be able to decide how, when and why his or her
life should end, that means you are in favour of suicide as a practice. The
ancient Romans and Greeks had no issue with it, the Japanese – it’s far from
unprecedented.
But you’re opening
a profound can of worms when you go down that route. You are saying that there
are some pains in the world that are worse than the pain of death, than the
pain of not being alive any more. You are reducing the taboo on suicide by
making it acceptable in some cases, which will then become more and more cases
as the taboo and stigma wears off. And this isn’t a good thing.
That there is
nothing so bad in this world that you should leave it by doing violence unto
yourself is, or should be, a fundamental truth. That is hard luck on those in
similar predicaments to Marie Fleming, but the greater good is very much more
important.
Besides. If
society does accept that notion that there are things in the world that cannot
be borne and that self-destruction is a better alternative to that pain, it is
then faced with the thorny problem of how to decide what those things that
cannot be borne are.
And this is even
more dangerous that an acceptance of suicide because what it does is quantify
the right to life. The right to life is currently an absolute – the life of the
Taoiseach or President is as important as the life of the homeless person who
slept rough in the doorways of Georgian Dublin last night and will again
tonight. The quality of their lives are completely different of course, but
they have an equal right to life under the law.
Legislation that
would change that right means that just being human and alive will no longer be
enough. Your life will have to have a certain quality, judged against a certain
series of parameters. If your life dips below this quality, it will be the inevitable
judgment of society that it’s time you were shuffling off and not be lingering,
depressing your healthy and well fellow citizens.
Advocates of
euthanasia would be (rightly) horrified at this, and argue that the choosing of
when, where and how to die is entirely a private matter. But that’s not true.
If that were true, there would be no such thing as society.
But there is such
a thing a society, and there are rules about how a person can or can’t act in
society, rules that exist for the protection of the society in general to the
sometime inconvenience of the individual. Besides; it’s no longer a private
matter if you are no longer capable of suicide and need assistance, which is
where we came in with the Marie Fleming case in the first place.
It’s a very
complex issue. Philosophical progress on the nature of what it is to be human
has not kept pace with scientific progress. We have advanced scientifically
while regressing philosophically – ours is an age that treasures youth, even
though we now live longer than ever, and the longer we live the further away youth,
our culture’s utmost treasure, gets from us.
We now have people
living longer and longer in an age for which only being young matters. There is
no great sign of joined-up thinking there, but a bridge will have to built, and
by smarter people than your correspondent.
It won’t happen in
time for Marie Fleming, and that’s tough. But it would be tougher on everyone
if the right to life were put on a sliding scale because of misplaced
compassion in a debate that is much more complex than is being portrayed in the
media.
FOCAL SCOIR: I’ve
been talking about suicide and I am all too fully aware of what a problem it is
in Ireland at the moment. I would sooner sound precious than be irresponsible so
here goes: If you’re not feeling great, the Samaritans’ number is 1850 60 60
90, and the website is http://www.samaritans.org. Call them, even if it’s only to talk
about football. Sometimes, five minutes can be all it takes for clouds to break
and things to look better. Nobody will think you’ll stupid – wouldn’t they much
prefer to chat with someone thoughtful like yourself than do regular office
stuff, or listen to a lot of yak from the HR department? You’ll be doing them a
favour when you call, if anything. Let the black dog go chase parked cars. Make
the call.
