Archbishop of Sydney

Euthanasia

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
17 March 2002

Euthanasia continues to be an issue which generates strong feelings on both sides. Supporters often liken euthanasia to suicide, and in America it is actually debated under the label "physician assisted suicide."

Unintentionally this label captures the fundamental difference between suicide and euthanasia. Suicide is a terrible act of despair, causing devastating hurt to family and friends of the victim. But it is something the victim does by himself.

Euthanasia requires other people to take on the burden of killing. This burden does not disappear simply because the killing is legalised and performed at the request of the victim and perhaps his family.

Patients are free to ask their doctors whatever they want. The issue for society is what responses should be deemed legal and acceptable.

Everyone agrees that any request for euthanasia from a person who is young and healthy should be denied.

At the same time, supporters of euthanasia basically say it is logical for some a the very old, the very sick, the disabled, even the very depressed a to ask for help in ending their lives.

There is a double standard here. Rights are universal, and if euthanasia is a "right" it must be a right for everybody, including the young and the healthy.

The reason that young healthy people would not be allowed to request euthanasia is that we consider them to be valuable. The implication is that that those who are allowed to request euthanasia are less valuable.

Dividing people into the valuable and the less valuable is not a good basis for law or society a or for the care of the weak and the sick.

People often say that Australian society should be a caring community. Institutionalising the distinction between people who are valuable and less valuable can only work against this goal.

Another issue is the unfair pressures that legalised euthanasia would place on patients and their families, as well as on doctors and hospital administrators.

People who are terminally ill have suffering enough without being made to feel that they are burdens on other people. What they need is reassurance from both their families and their carers that they continue to be valued not just for the good they may have done in their lives, but for who they are.

You cannot tell sick people that they are respected and valued if the law and medical practice operate on the principle that that they are useless burdens selfishly consuming resources that could be used to care for people who are less burdensome and more valuable.

Not all families would like to have their sick or their old euthansed. Not all hospital administrators, doctors and nurses would like to facilitate or practise euthanasia. But if euthanasia was legalised the pressures on all of them to save money, time and resources would soon become almost irresistible.

Euthanasia is a strange consolation to hold out to a family distressed by the illness of a loved one. Like the sick, they are under pressure enough.

This is also true for doctors and nurses. The pressures they are under to get it right in saving life are already enormous. Adding the pressure to get it right in administering death is not going to lighten their burden.