By DONALD DeMARCO
Better than ten years ago (October 31, 2005), while introducing a bill in the House of Commons, Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde stated that “the Parliament of Canada and its members cannot dither any longer and expect the courts and government to make the necessary changes to the Criminal Code to recognize the right to die with dignity for the people of Quebec and Canada.”
In response, Conservative MP Jason Kenney characterized Madame Lalonde’s statement as “an attack on the inalienable dignity of the human person, which is the foundational premise of any culture which merits to be considered a civilization.”
Canadians, apparently, are no longer “dithering” and are moving straight ahead to ensure that everyone has the right to die with dignity. If they had been “dithering,” their deliberations had to do with the fact that everyone, not just the dying, has dignity, and the mandate, “Thou shall not kill,” should not be taken lightly. Nonetheless, such thoughts have not proven to be much of an obstacle for the march toward euthanasia. An ounce of slogan appears to be worth more than a ton of tradition.
A recent poll, conducted by “Dying With Dignity Canada,” shows that 85 percent of Canadians agree with the proposition that individuals with a grievous and irremediable medical condition, including patients with dementia, should be permitted to consent to assisted death in advance. Slightly more than 2,500 Canadians were surveyed in the poll and asked the following question:
“Assuming the patient meets all the other criteria for a physician-assisted death, would you support or oppose physician-assisted death for patients who are competent at the time of the request but not competent at the time the request is carried out, as long as the person has a diagnosis of a grievous and irremediable condition when the request was made?”
Better than eight out of ten Canadians polled indicated that they supported physician-assisted death as specified in the question.
Seventy-eight percent of Catholics and 73 percent of Protestant Christians polled were included in the 85 percent who approved physician-assisted death. In conclusion, “Dying With Dignity Canada” stated that “the Canadian public resoundingly endorsed the Supreme Court’s February 2016 decision on physician-assisted dying.” That vote by the Supreme Court justices was 9-0.
In the United States, the mission of the “Death With Dignity National Center” is to promote “Death With Dignity” laws based on the Oregon Death With Dignity Act so as to provide “an option for dying individuals.”
Brittany Maynard, the most celebrated person to be put to death under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, it should be remembered, was not dying. If ever a word was both overused and misunderstood, it is that word “dignity.”
Samuel Johnson, not a man to be hoodwinked by the misuse of words, once remarked: “One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thought.” The rhetorical and ideological use of the word “dignity,” without any regard for its context or its different shades of meaning, does not constitute thought. A dog can respond to a word, but not to a carefully expressed thought. St. Thomas Aquinas, who possessed an absolute genius for grasping the different connotations of a word, pointed out that dignity has two important meanings, one referring to the fact that God endowed each person with an inalienable dignity, and a life that is lived within the moral law.
We should not, therefore, be talking about “death with dignity,” or “dying with dignity,” since all human beings possess a dignity that is irremovable. Everyone who dies, dies with this dignity in this sense. Christ, though His crucifixion was cruel, excruciating, and sacrilegious, nonetheless died with dignity. Mother Angelica, who passed away recently, suffered for 14 years prior to her demise. Her life and death had uninterrupted dignity. What we should be talking about is “living with dignity.” The proponents of dying with dignity do not seem to be much concerned about living without dignity.
Alcohol abuse, pornography, drug addiction, obscenity, abortion, sodomy, and other human indignities are incompatible with a dignified moral life. “Living with dignity” is virtually unspoken, although it is vitally needed. The relative silence of the euthanasia promoters on this point conveys the notion that dignity is not of particular importance for the living but only of importance for the dying.
Mistaking the word “dignity” for a moral principle falls on the heels of a similar error, namely, confusing the word “choice” for an entire moral philosophy. The word “choice” is isolated from context and consequence to serve as an unquestionable ideological value. The same can be said for the word “right.” Therefore, the notion of “the right to choose death” represents the conjunction of three words that are ideologically constructed, but not philosophically comprehended. Where are the deconstructionists when you need them?
It is easy for a person to use the word “right” to fortify his claims; it is relatively simple to separate “choice” from responsibility; and it is convenient to attach the word “dignity” to dying at the hands of a physician. What is more difficult, but more honest, is to make sure that a right has a realistic foundation, that a choice takes into account all its ramifications, and that dying is not an act of despair.
As G.K. Chesterton once remarked, in reference to the spiritually anemic: “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Ten Major Moral Mistakes and How They Are Destroying Society; How to Flourish in a Fallen World; and In Praise of Life are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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