Right to Life vs. Right to Death
In the process of paralleling the importance of human rights with importance of human life, there are two crucial questions that should be made:
1.What government thinks human rights are.
2.What human community thinks human rights are.
When writing about democratic government Stuart Mill characterized it as a type of authority which has an objective to persuade the population in the best fashion that all the decisions made by government are for welfare of the society. “Does the state have the right to impose its will over the will of the individual”? A fear question posed by Raphael Cohen-Almagor in his book “The Right to Die in Dignity”.
Here the gap is that the authority needs to define about the existence of human rights, to persuade the population about the necessity to protect their lives, having purpose not only to protect them but also to control their death. Though in the subordination of the political values the quality of human life is not less important, we know that nowadays in comparison with the human life, the economic benefits are more estimated by the governments while decisions making. The definitions on right to life concern not only to the right of person not to be killed, but also to the right to be born. Therefore, that doesn’t coincide with the rights of people to choice.
Euthanasia /Abortion vs. Capital Punishment:
Some think that before speaking about any rights which touch the aspect of right to life, we must firstly have the right to be born. If to look on the abortion from the perspective of right to be born, than what to do with rights of women to choices concerning motherhood? Some believe that the abortion is a crime and it costs human lives, but how about the reasons of the abortion? Taking into consideration the decisions of European Court of Human Rights, which stipulate that the fetus is not protected under Article 2 of European Convention on Human Rights, we can conclude that the right to life of fetus is limited with the right to life of mother.
But still in ECHR practice we come across to the fact that the decisions of ECHR are tended to be more pro-life than pro-death.
On the one hand, the claims brought to ECHR concerning the illegality of states’ interference into people’s right to choose death were having been ultimately unsuccessful. There are examples of a lot of cases against states referring to this issue, which were failed.
The Court considered that the risk of abuse inherent in a system which facilitated assisted suicide can never be underestimated. The Court agreed with the government’s argument that the restriction on access to right to death is intended to protect health and public safety and to prevent crime.
On the other hand, how serious are our combats concerning right to life while the existence of capital punishment expires all possibilities to consider euthanasia illegal? One cannot argue about illegality and immorality of voluntary giving up self-life while some states have the legal authority to kill.
The Right to Give Up the Life:
Do people have a right to choose death? Particularly, can assisted suicide be not only legally but also morally accepted? Giving up “inefficient” life is intended to protect the interests of the person who wants to die. And from the perspective of right to choice assisted suicide, which requires a final act by the patient, is undertaken for the one’s good.
Medicine and law define death as the moment when the body starts to give up. Phycology is the science that is able to assess the reasons of increase of the demands for assisted suicide and euthanasia. Sometimes death is accompanied by suffer when people can’t emotionally or physically control themselves. Some people share the opinion, that nowadays the development of technology has a grave impact on weakening the moral perceptions of people; while others believe that people are not able to control their perceptions about morality when they feel overwhelming and frightening pain and humiliation. And the awkward thing is that people have the right to possess property, but they don’t have the right to possess their own bodies which includes the right to decide the conditions and the date of one’s death.
To the issue concerning the state is able or not to control the increase of amount of people willing to die, the answer could also be posed from psychological perspective. The dread from death is powerful enough to keep human community in balance from the demand to die. Some people are not brave (or sure) enough to end up the life and only humiliated situation can bring them to the doctor, willing to give up.
Right to Death and Dignity:
Now let’s look to right to choose death from the perspective of right to live and die in dignity.
Raphael Cohen Almagor gives a competent definition of dignity as looking at ourselves with self-respect, with some degree of satisfaction:
“Dignity has many meanings. To have dignity means to look at oneself with self-respect, with some degree of satisfaction. Some of us, not all of us, would like to be able to determine the time of our death. We are born with no idea that we are about to come into this world and, in turn, some of us would like to decide the time in which we depart from this world. This is the argument that some people offer – that individuals should be allowed, whenever it is possible, to choose the time of their death.
I would like to introduce another notion that accompanies the notion of dignity— the notion of respect. The objections to the sanctity of life moral that speaks about a higher being or nature as the only agent entitled to take life is accompanied by a respectfor-others’ argument, derived from Immanuel Kant and the Kantian theological school which accords all people equal respect. Respect for a person means conceiving of the other as an end rather than as a means to something. As Kant explains, persons are not merely subjective ends whose existence has an effect on our actions, but such beings are objective ends; they exist as ends in themselves. An objective end, Kant maintains, is one for which there can be substituted no other end, for otherwise nothing of absolute value would be found anywhere.”
What is the state of health that allows people to live in dignity?
While some kindly assure that the concept of right to give up one’s life is new and it is influenced from technological development, which refers that people don’t appreciate life because the development of technology makes life easier, others think that this is quite not a new approach.
The right to give up a life was mentioned in Sir Thomas Moore’s work about utopian society, which referred about the right to choose death when the disease is not only incurable but also distressing and agonizing without cessation: “… then the priests and the public officials exhort the man … to free himself from this bitter life… or else voluntarily permit others to free him.”
Describing a perfect, utopian society, Sir Thomas Moore supported the notion of letting a terminally ill patient decide how and when he should die. Moore’s utopian society was supposed to consist of people whose quality of life was so wonderful. Because terminally ill patients no longer have this quality, if they prefer to die then it should be allowed and regulated.
Conclusion
Right to life and right to death are the correlated rights which refer to one’s personal liberty. They give us freedom of choice. This is up to human personal decision over controlling not only the way and quality of one’s life, but also the conditions and the date of one’s death.
Almagor speaks about right to death in very empathic way. He refers to give equal consideration to the interest of others and grant equal respect to a person’s life objects so long as they do not deliberately undermine the interests of others by interfering in a disrespectful manner. He defines the democratic society as one which is committed to seek the influence of social cooperation that can be discerned on the basis of mutual respect between free and equal individuals.
“This line of reasoning should be supplemented by our emphasis on the notion of concern, which is seen as the value of well-being. We ought to show equal concern for each individual’s good, to acknowledge that human beings are not only rational creations but irrational, emotional creatures. Treating people with concern means treating them with empathy – viewing people as human beings who may be furious and frustrated while, at the same time, are capable of smiling and crying, of careful decision-making, and of impulsive reactions. Concern means giving equal weight to a person’s life and autonomy. This is a combination of mind, body, and communication between the agent and those around her bed.”
In the conclusion I will agree with Raphael Cohen-Almagor, which looked at the right to death not only from legal perspective but also from the point of view of ethics. This is a very “delicate” choice to make and ethical behavior towards people’s personal choice is more rational to me than judging a situation without being even partially involved in it. Obviously, before making statements that can directly or indirectly affect others’ personal life, one should look at the situation from as many perspectives as possible. Law defines the dispositions and sanctions concerning human social behavior and decisions. But people who make these laws shall not forget that they are from the same origins with the ones who are affected by their decisions. And in this case we could be more empathic towards people who live in different health state and conditions than us.
08.06.2016
Hripsime Asatryan
References
- Raphael Cohen-Almagor, Right to Die in Dignity , file:///C:/Users/Ripsy/Downloads/fulltext_stamped.pdf
- Pretty v. the United Kingdom 29 April 2002 (Chamber judgment)
- Haas vs. Switzerland, ECHR, 2011
- Tomas Moore “Utopia”, ed. Planet PDF, http://history-world.org/Utopia_T.pdf
- Raphael Cohen-Almagor “The Right to Die with Dignity: An Argument in Ethics and Law”
- ECHR Cases on Right to Life http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/FS_Life_ENG.pdf
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