We should respect the dying wishes of the terminally ill

Dr Elliot was wealthy, educated, not depressed, and consistent about his desire to die. But his life was not perfect. His wife was open about the burdensome nature of his care. In his recitation of his reasons for choosing death Elliot includes the fact that he had burdened her for “too long already”.

Do decisions to die that reference the needs or influence of important others, or society at large, lack the independence necessary for us to heed them? Those opposed to individual choice in personal moral matters say “yes”.

Abortion opponents argue that an “abortion culture” pushes women to undertake “unwanted” abortions. Men who fail to offer women the financial or emotional support they want to continue the pregnancy “coerce” women into abortion in the same way as inadequately sacrificing relatives compel the terminally ill to “choose” death.

The truth is that if choices were only available to those with perfect lives, few of us would qualify. It is one thing to point out that social conditions may constrain the freedom of individuals to choose by depriving them of the full range of options, or the capacity to choose between them. It’s another to say that less than ideal choice is no choice at all.

As well, arguments that the addition of physician-assisted suicide to the range of options available to the terminally ill somehow reduces their freedom to choose make no sense at all.

We’ve been here before. Thirty years ago radical feminists insisted that a pro-natalist culture and coercion from “techno-docs” made the choices of infertile women to undertake IVF unworthy of the name. These feminists claimed that the incapacity of “vulnerable” infertile women to choose, plus the damage they claimed the technology posed to women as a group, justified banning it.

Resentful of being patronised, many infertile women returned fire.

Choices made in an imperfect world are still worthy of respect, they insisted. By all means, fix the world to expand our options further. But in the meantime, leave us with the freedom to decide between the options that are available, according to our needs and values.