“America is a land of hysterical legislation in which every now and again the legalisation of euthanasia is put forward by literary dilettanti who discuss it as an academic subtlety or by neurotic “intellectuals” whose high-strung temperament cannot bear the thought of pain.”
(British Medical Journal editorial of 1906, quoted by Ezekiel J. Emanuel)
Freud would have had a field day with my choice of journalism as a profession, which gave me a front row seat for humanity’s bloodthirstiness.
As a teenager, I fled the living room the second a wailing child, flying bullet or drop of blood appeared on the television screen. To this day, I cannot bear to see another person in pain, and I’m a bit of a wimp on that score myself. I am quite certain I would have ended up in surgery, and therapy, were it not for the saintly anesthetist who administered my epidural after I succumbed to seven hours of labour.
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I was frankly proud that I had made it that far and cannot understand how any woman gets through the whole thing without medication. It was one of those times when I was happy to be here and not in the UK, where two of my closest girlfriends had terrible experiences at the hands of the NHS. One was refused an epidural on the ground she was seven centimeters dilated which, according to my gynaecologist, should have been no obstacle. The other was told by the nurse at her side that she’d be better off without the epidural because the anaesthetist was completely pissed. Given the choice between pain relief and possible paralysis, she chose temporary agony. A wise but unnecessary choice.
On the other hand, I have the greatest respect for anyone who has the courage to spare themselves and their loved ones the agony of a needless, drawn-out death from some terminal disease. So I was relieved to see the Supreme Court voted 6-3 this week to uphold an Oregon law that allows doctors to help terminally ill patients end their lives.
The Court ruled that the Bush Administration, in the person of John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, had overstepped its boundaries by threatening to withdraw the prescribing rights of physicians who helped their patients die. Oregon’s law is unique in the United States, and out of step with this administration’s social policies, but the fact that it is there is not, in my view, proof of what the British medical establishment would have denounced through the lens of 1906 as “hysterical legislation”. It seems to me that this law’s existence is proof of the robustness of this country’s democracy, and a celebration of common sense.
Oregonians first approved their “Death With Dignity Act” by a whisker in 1994, by 51 to 49 per cent, but later resisted an attempt to overturn it, by 60 per cent. This was no easy decision, clearly. It was far easier for the Supreme Court to conclude that the administration had no right to go after doctors for acting within the bounds of a law approved by their home state.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I take death lightly. Like most of my generation of reporters, I’ve had my brushes with death, and I’ll admit it, I was terrified. All I wanted to do was get out. I’d like to say that the experience made me braver but the absolute opposite is true. Now, sitting in the safety of my home office, terrified of bird flu, terrorists and bad drivers, I am struck that this is perhaps because I have seen so many people have their dignity taken away by force, that I am so certain that the terminally ill individual should have the right to choose when and how he or she dies.
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I understand all the arguments against assisted suicide, the way the notion conjures up Nazi horrors, the possibility it could be exploited or that medical mistakes could be made. But we are hopeless at dealing with death and aging in general and my instincts tell me that legalising assisted suicide is a step in the right direction. We treat getting older as an abnormality, a disease, rather than part of life, something to be managed, not avoided.
My mother and sister are always laughing at two advertisements showing on television in the UK at the moment that to my mind, are symptomatic of the twisted thinking that entangles us. Both ads open with a 40-something woman laughing, and you can never be sure if she’s the woman from the ad for incontinence pads or the one for false teeth. Then there are the ads for funeral insurance that are shown on both sides of the Atlantic. I mean, isn’t that the last thing you’re going to be worrying about once you’re dead? Of all the things you should be able to count on someone else to deal with, isn’t this it?
I hope the British Parliament will have the sense to follow the lead of its medical establishment, which unlike its ancestors, has withdrawn its opposition to assisted suicide- assuming, of course, the strictest of safeguards - and uttered not a word that I can find about hysterical Americans. Isn’t that the least that the dying deserve?