The dangers of legitimating suicide

A story in the BBC website (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0jjq2vynq7o) indicates the fundamental threat of the legalisation of assisted dying/assisted suicide and/or euthanasia to our civilisational values. It concerns a site designed to match “suicide partners”. More than 700 people in the UK have posted on a pro-suicide website looking for someone to die with, reported the BBC.

There is a point to the taboo of suicide. Individuals share too deeply in the life of society for one to be ill and others not to be affected. We depend on social relationships for our survival and our happiness. Those saving others from burning buildings and our veneration for them is jeopardized by someone purposely taking a life, even if it is ours to take. Giving in to suicide is to admit the meaningless of life and of the purpose of living. It is a betrayal not just of human society but of every living thing.

Of course, we have always had suicides and they in and of themselves do not threaten the fabric of society. It is our attitude to suicide and, by implication, to life itself that is at stake. A society that tolerates suicide reflects the relaxation of social bonds, a sort of social depression that mirrors individual depression that can endanger the person. In other words, our society is in trouble when our taboo against suicide weakens.

Many will be horrified by the BBC story but will not relate it to assisted suicide. After all, assisted suicide has been rebranded “assisted dying” and is really only about the granting of the wish to die of individuals who are already dying, isn’t it? But saying that we tolerate the suicides of some is like saying that we support free speech except for the difficult cases. Taboos cannot tolerate exceptions but must be regarded as more important than the various individual exceptions to the rule. That is, we can tolerate individual exceptions but cannot tolerate a change in the rules.

Maybe taboos should be challenged? Few are as important to society that against incest. Yet, it may be argued, the biological and religiously based reasons for the taboo no longer exist. Sex need not be for purposes of procreation. Yet, the vast majority of people would regard incest – particularly as relationships become closer – as inherently wrong. That is, they are wrong whatever the circumstances.

The true project of the attempt to legalise assisted suicide – it seeks to establish a new morality, a new system of beliefs. As Emile Durkheim noted, this new morality “attempt[s] to prove to men the senselessness of life and that it is self-deception to believe that it has purpose. Then new moralities originate which, by elevating facts to ethics, commend suicide …”

There is far more at stake when it comes to legalising assisted suicide than a few suffering people.