A letter from Iona Community Member Erik Cramb:
Physician-assisted suicide
Anyone who read stories like that of Val Mackay of Perth in the Dundee Courier, who suffers from a debilitating form of multiple sclerosis which has left her ‘a bed-ridden individual who cannot feed herself without assistance’, cannot remain unmoved by her words, ‘This is no life, lying here, dependent on everybody for everything.’
Over the years of a long ministry in the Kirk I have, on a handful of occasions, wondered if the person whom I was burying had lived too long.
I particularly remember the funeral of a man who had been one of the most vigorous and active persons I ever knew. He had a paralysing stroke at the age of 58 and was reduced to a totally dependent existence, with no powers of speech or control of his limbs, permanently drooling out of the side of his mouth. This life seemed to me to be no life, not for him, for his wife or for his children and made him into a strangely intimidating person for his infant grandchildren. I could of course be wrong and don’t for a moment doubt that there are hundreds of similarly afflicted stroke victims whose lives are treasures and are surrounded by the love and very willing support of their families. My friend lived for two and a half years after his stroke and was devotedly looked after by his family, but his death finally came as a mercy and release for all.
On BBC’s Panorama recently, faced with the dignified questioning of Margo McDonald MSP who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease and is seeking to promote a debate in Scotland about medically assisted suicide, Cardinal Keith O’Brien gave the uncompromising answer that life is God’s gift and is therefore for Him alone to take back. For the Cardinal, there is no debate. But he could be wrong. Is there not the possibility of a theological inconsistency in allowing medical intervention to enhance or extend life while forbidding such intervention to end life? Could it be that the medical intervention that saved my 58-year-old friend from immediate death in the wake of his stroke and ‘gifted’ him 30 months of life so limited that many of his friends and family referred to it as ‘mere existence’, was wrong?
I had polio as a baby and, thank God, my life has been massively enhanced by medical intervention. I am now entering the foothills of old age with the diminishing powers that come with it and no doubt will soon be facing increasing dependency on pills and zimmers and other people. So for me this is no academic theological argument. This is the real stuff of life and death, an issue not to be stifled by any unchallenged recital of dogma.
Anxiety about illness, incapacity, the manner of death and death itself are all hedged about with the deepest of our fears. What if I become incapacitated in mind or body or both, will I still wish to ‘live’? What if my mind goes before my body with Alzheimer’s? Will there be any purpose in my living? Will I be a burden, remembered mainly in my frailty? Will I feel, if assisted suicide is made legal, at some point obliged to go? Will somewhere in the future someone try to persuade me that this is a way of ‘laying down my life for my friends’, of which the Bible says there is no greater love? Prime Minister Gordon Brown was absolutely right when he said, on Radio 4, that he was not prepared to create any legislation which might put vulnerable people under pressure to agree to end their own lives.
In my ministry I have seen in many a house long and precious care given, as a joy, not a duty, to dying loved ones. I have seen such care and devotion within my own family. I have also often seen the joy and hope offered by hospice care where the process of death becomes dignified and fulfilling. Should we not be working much harder for far greater provision of conditions that make the end days a time of sharing what’s important and putting things right here in this life? This is more than simply making things easier.
But, if society were to agree that the timing of death should be a decision for the dying themselves, is it beyond human wit to create a law with enough powerful safeguards to protect the vulnerable? There is a debate about dying to be had and I hope and pray that our nation, the people, politicians, medical practitioners, academics and the churches will engage thoughtfully, prayerfully and, for the sake of people like Val Mackay, urgently.
Yours sincerely,
Rev. Erik Cramb
If you would like to respond to Erik Cramb's letter, email the e-bulletin at:
neil@ionabooks.com
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Thank you.
