My Take | Canada is about to make assisted suicide a social service
- By legislating what may be the world’s most permissive euthanasia laws, the country will be conducting the most far-reaching social-economic experiment under a liberal-democratic regime – the right to self-terminate with state assistance
Like most people, I couldn’t imagine myself dying when I was young. But after 30, I started worrying more about it. Every passing decade makes what used to be an abstract idea feel more real and concrete.
But when I become introspective, it’s not death per se that I am most afraid of. As the wise Sancho Panza likes to say, sleep and death are mere cousins; and I love napping at all times of the day. Rather it’s the suffering and unpredictability of dying as a long-drawn-out process that truly terrifies. Advances in contemporary medicine, in a way, make it much worse.
I have seen it with my late father and grandmother who lingered hopelessly and immobile in bed for months and years so the images of their dying slowly put the fear of God in me. When people lament someone dying “prematurely” and suddenly, I usually think it’s not such a bad thing. I wish I could die not knowing what hit me.
As a Canadian, personally, I am glad that when the time comes, the state will help me out of my misery in the quickest and most painless way possible. But as a student of philosophy, I can understand why many people around the world are seriously shocked by the liberal attitude and laws in Canada for assisted suicide. What is most interesting to me is that the most serious and concerned critics are from fellow liberal democracies that are tackling the same moral, legal, medical and social conundrums.
Legalised euthanasia is problematic enough. Canada arguably has the world’s most permissive euthanasia laws. And if not now, they will be starting next March.