Soon we will accept that useless lives should end

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thedeathoftheleft/media.mp3″ title=”Matthew Parris and Freddy Gray debate whether assisted dying will ever become accepted” startat=1781]

Listen

[/audioplayer]Throughout the short life of the Assisted Dying Bill which failed last week in the Commons, the ‘faith community’ (a quaint term for that category of human beings who throughout history have been more assiduous than any other in trying to kill each other) have with skill and persistence deployed an argument of great potency. Such is the argument’s intuitive appeal that the pro-assisted-dying brigade never found a way of countering it. They have resorted simply to denying that what the faith squad say would happen, could happen.

Most popular

Julie Burchill

The glamour and grit of J.K. Rowling

But it could. The argument is that licensing assisted dying is to smile upon the practice. The legal change would act as a cultural signal that society now approves. This would in time lead to pressure on those who might not otherwise have contemplated ending their lives, to hasten their own demise — so as ‘not to be a burden’ on others. One day (say the faith squad) it could even become the norm.

I am sure they’re right. We who may argue for ‘permissive’ legislation must have the intellectual honesty to admit that the ending of a legal prohibition does act as a social signal. In vain do we protest that ‘nobody is forcing’ upon anybody else (say) same-sex marriage, or the cashing in of pension pots, or a quickie divorce, or the possession of marijuana. Indeed not. Nobody is forcing these delights upon others, but humans are social animals and one of the ways a society signals its attitudes is by criminalising behaviour it thinks very harmful, and decriminalising behaviour towards which its attitude has softened.

Thus, for instance, the stoning to death of women taken in adultery under sharia law is undoubtedly the signal of a cultural attitude towards adultery.