I write to you, as the catechism advises me I ought, as a nonbeliever of goodwill, who is more than willing to engage with those who believe on questions related to the truth and public policy. With great respect for your gentle personality, daring, charm, authenticity and achievement, I am writing to expound you to my position on why abortion and euthanasia are to remain and be made legal, respectively. As the feeble rhetorician, and in the even more bamboozled and bamboozling logician, I would not presume to think I have any chance of persuading a woman of your wit and tenacity with my meager skill. Yet, this was, I think a good exercise, since it has exposed more sharply the points of difference that make our conversations interesting, as well as galvanizing my convictions considerably. I, therefore, bag you to indulge me, particularly at the points where — à la Socrates — my love of the truth is perhaps placed too far above the courtesies dictated by friendship and admiration :-)
We live in a pluralistic society, and if you are as committed to that, in theory and in practice, as I am, then you ought to recognize that the only basis for a criminal law ought to be a form of negative utilitarianism. That is, that is we ought to reduce as much harm as possible. In the famous phrase, my liberty ceases when my fist hits your face. Believe me, as I sure you know, it’s hard enough to get persons, who are far more emotional than rational, to agree on this basic principle, but it’s our best shot at creating a stable society, in the current pluralist context. For, as Isaiah Berlin points out, some values really are incommensurable and moral decisions really do imply moral loss. Any tradition of natural law, allegedly written on the human heart, from the beginning of creation, comes from a historically conditioned setting with intrinsic propositions, which not all cultures share.
Sure, from the perspective of 3000 feet, I’m sure that human values may share similar characteristics, but universal must we make this natural law, before it loses all meaning. In addition, the tradition of natural law has lost much credibility, because it’s so heavily indebted to ideologies of gender, power, class, race, and ability relations, which we, as marginalized persons must not and cannot accept. Consider, for a moment, how much monstrosity figures in the theology of St. Augustine/the New Testament and the negative consequences for persons with disabilities, racialized groups, LGBT people etc. I’m sure we can debate the meanings of these terms within the Western tradition, but the fact is, an increasing number of Canadians, come from different heritages altogether, though they may have been affected by our colonial dominance. This being the case, the foundation for law cannot be religious, unless coincidentally religious precepts benefit public utility. Only then can we have what liberal theory calls “overlapping consensus”. This is not to say that citizens cannot or should not disagree about ethical questions strongly and/or publicly. Indeed, this is the foundation of healthy deliberative democracy. Nor am I saying that persons are not entitled to have religious views, but theology, so long as I live and breathe, shall not serve as the basis for Canadian legislation.
The liberal state can promote values through education, insofar this campaign would reduce specific unsolicited harm toward individual from another human being; or this may apply to can apply to himself, insofar as it is presumed that being a more rational way they would want better for himself. This is the principle Volenti non fit injuria, especially clear in criminal law especially in the case of crime, in which punishment ought to be justified in terms of public utility. The state, with restrictions, may act in the place of a guardian, if the individual has forfeited her right to be considered as a fully rational agent by harming other person, and if her punishment is necessary to prevent further harm. Not every question of moral importance, however, is under the purview of law.
Undoubtedly, while we
ought to eat, how we ought to spend our money, and who we ought to sleep with
are very important moral questions, but as Henry David Thoreau says, “law never
made man a wit more just”. The best we can do it try doing sure that person
have the right to pursue their goals in a way that is not harmful to other
persons, even when we might disagree with them strongly. If we were to impose
by law a common opinion expressed in law that provided little room for
disagreement, on issues of bioethics for example, in which there are many
different factors considered for making an ethical judgment, we would run the
risk of imposing what is called “a tyranny of the majority”. History has shown
that visitors perhaps one of the worst power arrangement for humankind’s
intellectual and moral development. It is for this reason that Queen Elizabeth
I was right “not to make windows into the souls men”. This is the job of the
prelate not a politician, for those responsible for salvation not government
administration.
Liberal theory is inseparable from liberal economics. A person’s primary possession is his body, and he therewith has the right to to dispose thereof as he sees fit, as well as the capital he may accrue through labor, so long as he does not injure his fellows, either through direct omission or commission of (potentially) malevolent actions. Liberal theory, therefore, has at its core the rejection of Christian teleology, born of Aristotelian metaphysics, particularly Thomas Aquinas’ theories about law and property ownership. For Aquinas, all law should work toward the common good (human flourishing which has the highest fulfillment in worship of God). Because of their belief human beings do not have the absolute rights over property, least of all their own bodies, because they merely rent what they use from God, who, as the supreme ruler of the universe, has dominion over everything. (See also John Locke’s argument again suicide). It is for this same reason that Augustine has such a problem with suicide; for it constitutes murder and theft. By destroying yourself, you destroy something that you do not own — you are alienated from yourself insofar as you are alternately subject to God. I refused to accept a theology in which human beings are properly or slaves.
While this may be true for Christian, Jews Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, as well as some Hindus and while they may be the opinion of the majority, this does not mean that their position is based on logical argumentation, and/or empirical evidence. The prevalence of an opinion is no guarantee of its validity. What factual evidence can we use in public policy, in order to determine that the universe is in such a hierarchical and harmonious relationship, with God running the show? Empirical observation would seem to suggest the opposite! Moreover, if one examines how we conduct politics, with a few glaring exceptions, things have gotten, as theology has become an irritating backseat driver in political deliberation. We cannot accept the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, and his subsequent political theology, because it is not demonstrable from our experience (see David Hume an Inquiry concerning Human Understanding).
We must — you say — then have recourse to the categorical imperative: “act, such that you can will your action become a universal law”. But this again does not hold. Setting aside for a moment problem with end debate within Kantian ethics, remember that my argument is not that euthanasia is moral; rather my burden of proof is merely to show that in on the legally permissible. Undoubtedly impracticability of the society in which legislators tried to enforce the Kantian imperative; Kant himself knew that this was an impossible task for the legislator.
What is also comes down to is the very important issue of “freedom of the person” under the charter and the right of freedom of conscience. If we imagine “an original position” in which disinterested parties are deliberating about the makeup of their future society, I don’t think I’m in partial spectator, as difficult as this is to imagine, a situation in which a person — without theological bias — were content to a possible scenario where he might be compelled to suffer indefinitely, in order to be the discomfort of other people. If John Rawls is correct in suggesting that an ideal state of things is one in which are actual legislation and the “as if” construction of the original position reach a kind of “reflective equilibrium” in which there is a balance between the two positions, it would seem to me our current legislation is not just. It prevents free exercise of autonomy, in many cases promoting unnecessary suffering, and this is born of a false correlation between assisted suicide and the state of disabled people.
This, by the way, is not supported in countries that have assisted suicide. In fact, it has been shown to alleviate anxiety about disability and illness, and to be an option taken by very few. If, because we are liberal country, suicide itself is not illegal under the criminal code, to not allow persons who require assistance to end their lives to procure assistance it amounts to disability discrimination, prohibited by the charter and other documents. If the attendant model is to work properly, persons with disabilities must be able to procure services, allowing them to execute practices meaningful to their lives, otherwise we run the risk of letting religious and/or moral scruples of the able-bodied restrict our personal liberty. Are the disabled to stop masturbating, lest, for example, dealing with its consequences be offensive to attendants. Heaven forbid we practice BDSM!
The whole “disabled people need protection from the able-bodied majority, in case they kill us for being different discourse” is the wrong way to go about things. By saying over and over again that our lives have meaning, we are, in fact, begging the walking man to affirm that they do, rather than acting as though they do, or ignoring the preposterous notion that they don’t. By resisting assisted suicide from this perspective, we get into the ideological discourse of Jesus’ injured sheep who can serve as objects have compassion and moral exemplars for the rest of humanity that I find absolutely nauseating and tiresome. I have better things to do with my time than provide “the walking man” with the fetish for his narcissistic fantasy of pity and redemption.
No one should have to be an uncle Tom for the walking man, and I think the movement would be better off taking inspiration from Malcolm X rather than the Bible. This is could be one way in which a person if she so chooses, could enact the agency over her own body, liberating it from the oppressor “by any means necessary. My ongoing problem with your anti-euthanasia & antiabortion politics is, therefore, the following: while you are without question, a very admirable person and a competent disability rights advocate, your politics, at least in this respect, seem antithetical to disability liberation. Insofar as you systematically seek legal sanctions which would restrict persons’ abilities to exercise freedoms over their own bodies, are you not seeking to handicap people through the legal system; and, furthermore, does this not contradict the express aim of disability politics. You will rightly point out of course that this is because there are theological, and consequently, higher order values at stake. But then this raises the broader question of whether full liberation can be had within the context of “walking man’s religions”? And to that question I may respond that an analogous situation to Malcolm X, when disillusioned as he was with the “white man’s religions”, he joined the Nation of Islam.
But surely, you will now tell me, you are not making a theological argument, and this is not about religion, I am simply protecting “life”. Clearly, everyone can get on board with endorsing a concept so innocuous and positive? Well, simply put, no. The only reason you make the very fact of existence sacrosanct comes from theology, and it has more frightening implications then you realize. There is more to life than simple existence, and to compel someone to live, who does not want to, and is in pain — purely on the basis of one’s own theological scruples — amounts to sadistic and sanctimonious cruelty. You may say that life is meaningful because every person shares the image of God, but this is the presupposition I do not share, even if you desire to to give it transhistorical & transcultural validity. I’m not denying you have the right to persuade a person not to end her life, I’m not even saying you don’t have the right to protest how disabled people are treated in a contemporary culture vis-à-vis euthanasia and abortion; you, however, don’t not have the right to enforce your personal view by law. It is condemnable! It is the same logic that prevented attempted to prevent sodomy for hundreds of years, and it is the same logic that attempts to prevent women from wearing whatever the hell they want in public today, whether they have particular cultural traditions or not. If given the choice between liberty or death, I would choose death.
You protest again: it is never a rational to choose death, so the state is acting appropriately, when it prevents an individual from committing suicide, since no rational person would choose death over life, but this argument is so obviously absurd, it’s almost not worth refuting! I will do it anyway. If it were true, there would be no legitimate reason to go to war, since human beings under bad conditions would have no reason to risk their lives. All forms of life would be preferable. There would be no there would be no need to have virtues, because there would be no qualitative differences between types of lies live. This is the absolute paradox of crypto-Christian pro-life and anti-euthanasia politics. On the one hand, you endeavor to protect bare life as such, while on the other, Christianity has at its core of the tradition of bastardized virtue ethics based on the myth of martyrdom, which clearly implies a separation between living well and existence as such. I don’t understand. Perhaps just a paradox?
If I were Christian, or, perhaps better, when I was Christian, I would have found it an extreme insult to my personal dignity, if anything communist regime took over Canada and forcefully to deny Jesus at gunpoint. Expecting to be martyred upon my refusal, instead, they locked me in a mental institution and put me on all kinds of drugs, until I learned to comply. I ask you, which of these scenarios is more totalitarian? And yet, it does not the same logic apply? Surely, there is equal, if not more, evidence for preferring death to life, in some circumstances, than subscribing to the doctrinal claims of the Catholic Church, some of whose teaching is mysterious by definition. By using this example is clear that in certain cases a person can determine her life is not worth living, to her, at least, any more, if we also accept that it is perfectly rational, at least in some circumstances, for a person to sacrifice his life, based on the truth claims of Christianity, or any number of causes, which might not have nearly as much intersubjective validity, if one were to ask an impartial spectator..
No doubt, we can agree that the disabled need extra care to live meaningful lives. Moreover, we can agree that the contemporary response to disability-impairment is most unjust, and the fear of becoming disabled and/or ill is caused by inadequate healthcare and an ideology of health and youth, which are both caused by consumerism, and a general term toward narcissistic personality disorder. We can also agree that there needs to be extraordinarily better palliative care, and that we could have the resources to achieve it. By no means should a disabled person or any other person feel that her should or must end her life. Given the level of opulence we have achieved, this state of affairs is simply unacceptable, but if she has a desire to do so, it is not your place to stop her. Nor is it anyone else’s. By trying to stop euthanasia, or whatever you want to call it, you are not defending the rights of disabled people; you are taking away an opportunity for those who want to make choices. Even if they may be disagreeable, cowardly, or, in the case is Steven Fletcher, poorly argued and blatantly discriminatory towards people with intellectual disabilities, and, thereby, disgusting. It’s true that decision is not reversible, but so are many surgical procedures, many of the more complicated varieties of which have higher mortality rates then we realize. People do crazy things, when they want to live meaningful lives, and the great thing about life is yours the only one that gets to write your story.
To be clear, Taylor, you are fantastic person, and I commend you for being politically active. Your commitment to the truth is exemplary. And I truly have tried to be, as the catechism says, a nonbeliever of goodwill , always ready to engage in dialogue. I have no absolute answers; I only have suppositions with varying degrees of probability. Catholicism is a beautiful ideological system and the aesthetic consequences of Christendom, for me at least, are unparalleled. Human beings can believe whatever they want, and even tried to persuade others of what they believe and why they believe it. Otherwise, human existence would be rather boring. I will you been conceded that there is more of an ethical argument to be had over abortion, but you can’t use religion to force another person what to do what you want with his body, if it does not affect you directly, and that is what you’re doing when you actively try to prevent euthanasia.
Moreover, think it somewhat problematic that first, at least on Facebook, you get near universal positive feedback because no one takes the time or is too scared to disagree with you. And, understandably, most of your friends, as is natural, share your views. Second, having and disability, as such, does not give you extra credibility on issues and ethics, at least I have some formal training in ethics and political theory. Third, these are not disability issues in themselves, and furthermore, there are much more complex versions than the ones you and, Steven Fletcher would suggest within the disability community, if that means anything. Fourth, your portrayal of able-bodied normativity was extreme even for me, who disability politics are quite far to the left. We will never get ambulatory persons on our side with such invective. Last but not least, while you spread fears of a resurgent Holocaust (by the way, kudos on your “everything culminates in Hitler argument”; that is always very rhetorically effective), it is almost impossible to find a washroom that is adequately accessible, the vast majority of disabled people living absolute poverty, access to services dwindle constantly, and hate crime are on the rise. So congratulations on the effort, but without reason your rhetoric will become “a whirl of sound and fury signifying nothing”.
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