The right to die on your own terms is inherent to the right to life. Until fairly recently, the controversial question of medical assistance in dying had flown under the radar of public debate. However, last month, in the UK, a new Assisted Dying Bill was introduced in Parliament, aiming to grant terminally ill adults with six months or fewer to live the right to seek a medically supervised death. The text of the bill is now published.
This might be the first piece of good news coming out of the United Kingdom since July’s general election. The right to euthanasia is a moral necessity rooted in the individual’s sovereignty over their own life. It is also easily justifiable per most mainstream moral worldviews. For a utilitarian, euthanasia maximises overall happiness and reduces suffering. Deontology justifies it by respecting a person’s autonomy. Existentialism upholds it as a deeply personal, authentic choice in confronting death. Nihilism sees it as a matter of personal preference, given life’s lack of intrinsic meaning.
Still, it is an issue with the potential to rile up the masses like few others. There is little substance to the arguments against euthanasia. Talking about ethics around death is naturally icky and prone to charge people emotionally. Perhaps that is why the opposition to legalising it seems to come down to organised hysteria around far-fetched scenarios with little or no connection to reality.
In the United States, there exists considerable moral panic on this topic. MAGA conservatives try to petrify the public with stories of Canada’s Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) program, in which Canada’s inefficient government-run healthcare system is demonised as killing the patients it can’t afford to cure. American intellectual Richard Hanania delved deep into the specific cases of medical assistance in dying which often come up as scare stories. He found that in all cases, they are either made up or wildly misrepresented.
Hanania also points to the statistics, which rebut the argument that euthanasia is used for those with trivial or non-terminal issues. The overwhelming majority of people seeking MAID in Canada are doing so after receiving palliative care. The program’s primary users are the elderly and those grappling with severe, incurable medical conditions. Only 2% of MAID recipients in 2021 were people without terminal conditions, and even this group primarily consisted of individuals facing extreme and unbearable suffering. According to the data, euthanasia is working exactly as it is supposed to. It allows willing individuals to escape the dread of never-ending pain and a life devoid of meaning or pleasure.
There is one moral worldview that does not allow euthanasia: divine command theory. In many ways, the current policy on euthanasia is a relic of Europe’s Christian past, which held to the dogma of cherished suffering. Earthly life, according to the theologian, is a string of misery and suffering with a grand purpose: atonement for sins. However, let go of the presupposition that there exists some cosmic balance wherein pain in this life will ever be compensated for and opposition to euthanasia starts to look like pearl-clutching.
To force a man to endure agony against his will is the peculiar cruelty of those who claim moral superiority—an affliction more vicious than the disease itself. Euthanasia is not an attack on life—it is the affirmation of its value. It is a recognition that life is worth living only when it can be shaped and guided by the individual who possesses it.
Belief in freedom stands at the core of the argument for medical assistance in dying. It is an issue so fundamental that if I voted, I could be a single-issue voter on this topic, considering the magnitude of unnecessary suffering caused and freedom violated by bans on euthanasia.
My support for euthanasia comes down to a strong moral intuition I cannot shake off: that I should be free to escape the fate of consistent unbearable suffering devoid of any meaning wherein I can no longer pursue any value in life. That I have the right to face death on my terms, just as I have the right to tell my heirs how I wish my body to be disposed of after I die.
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