The right to die: Let’s have a conversation

IN a country that can’t agree on marriage equality it may seem recklessly premature to suggest that we might have to reconsider how we manage fatal illnesses, end-of-life decisions, and basic human dignity and sensitivity when the path to an imminent death is marked with nothing more uplifting than personality collapse and drug-induced detachment. 

Yesterday’s ruling in the Circuit Criminal Court in Dublin, after a seven-day trial, where taxi driver Gail O’Rorke was acquitted of helping her friend Bernadette Forde take her own life seems to make that conversation all the more pressing.

Ms Forde suffered from progressive multiple sclerosis.

The idea of euthanasia is abhorrent to many Irish people and gives rise to grave suspicions among many others.

However, as medical science contrives to extend human life to ever more unimagined limits and sustain lives that might have once been untenable, a whole set of new and demanding questions arise.

It does seem hard, though, to argue against the proposition that if someone diagnosed with a fatal illness, and is of sound mind, prefers to end their life before they are ravaged by illness or drugs that that wish be granted.

It is, after all, a personal decision and impinges on nobody other than the patient. Like it or not social change and advances in medicine mean we cannot avoid the conversation for much longer.

DISCOVER MORE CONTENT LIKE THIS