Sermon Archive
The right to die
Sermon preached by Ken Boyd at Matins on Mothering Sunday, 10 March 2002
Genesis 27 30-45; John 4 27-42
Doctors and the courts faced an agonising decision last week. From her hospital bed, a 40 year old paralysed woman asked them to be allowed to die. For a year, she has been kept alive on a ventilator and is unable to move or breathe unaided. Rehabilitation treatment might make her a little more independent, but she has rejected it. She doesn?t want to live with that degree of disability. She has also rejected the possibility of being weaned off the ventilator gradually, and of allowing nature to take its course. That, she believes, would sooner or later mean a slow, painful, and for her a frightening death, probably from the complications of a chest infection. So what she has asked her doctors to do, is simply to switch off the ventilator, and allow her to die quickly.
But her doctors are unwilling to do this. Why? Well, having treated many other patients with similar conditions, they know that some, who at first want to die, later change their minds. Another woman in her 40s, for example, said on the BBC last week that after becoming paralysed, she tried several times to kill herself, and even five years later ?still wanted to die?. But she also ?realised the effect it would have on friends around me, which made me think ?I want to carry on? ?. ?I can understand? she said, ?how desperate this woman is. I know what it feels like, but in this case, I think a year is not enough time to have adjusted to what?s an extremely difficult situation... I think she needs the kinds of support I have had to get her through this difficulty. I think it takes more courage to live, I really do.?
The doctors are unwilling to take the responsibility of switching off the ventilator. They want to buy time, in the hope that she will change her mind. As a very last resort, they are willing to allow the woman herself to take the responsibility of switching it off. But she doesn?t want to do that. She doesn?t see it as suicide, but she is concerned that her 12 year old Godchild is worried about that, and maybe her church will be also. That is why she wants her doctors to do it. Another doctor has said he is willing to do it, and she feels that her own doctors are not respecting her rights. That is why she has taken it to court. By law, a competent patient?s refusal of treatment must be respected.
These then are the bare facts of this case about which the court now has to decide. It has heard from psychiatrists that the woman is competent to make decisions about her own treatment. So it looks as if her right to have the ventilator switched off must be respected. But the court also has to consider whether that judgement implies that the doctors in this case were acting unlawfully by not agreeing earlier to the woman?s request. And that could set a dangerous precedent. Doctors might then feel that, to keep on the safe side of the law, they have to agree fairly quickly when patients ask to be allowed to die. But the problem, again, is that given time, patients may change their minds about this.
Now these difficult decisions are for the court, not you and I, to resolve. But the woman in this case, Miss B as the law calls her, is a real person; and although she has no family of her own, she is very concerned about how all this is affecting her young Goddaughter. She is also a member of a church, and is concerned too about how her friends there feel about this. Miss B, in other words, might be one of us. If she were, how might we respond? What might we want to say to her?
Well most important, I think, is what we should not say. The other paralysed woman who spoke to the BBC said ?I think it takes more courage to live, I really do.? That woman clearly has earned the right to say that. But if we haven?t been in the situation that she and Miss B share, we don?t have that right. Experience teaches us that through great suffering, people can grow and flourish. But suffering also can be too much, and it can destroy people. In the past, the church has sometimes been too ready to say to people ?suffering can be good for you?. What is wrong with that, is not the words ?suffering can be good?, but adding ?for you?. Suffering can be a means of growth: and that is something we may say to ourselves. But it is not something we should say to others when they are suffering.
Would we want to say something to Miss B about suicide? From an early date, the church has condemned suicide. One reason why it did, was to curb the zeal of early Christians who were over-enthusiastic about becoming martyrs, in a way like suicide bombers today. But today, when people other than suicide bombers seriously try to kill themselves, the circumstances usually are far too tragic for condemnation to be effective or more than trivial. Whatever can be said against suicide morally, the deepest and most appropriate response to it in Christian terms, is what John Donne once wrote: ?Thou knowest this man?s fall, but thou knowest not his wrestling, which perchance was such that almost his very fall is justified and accepted by God?.
What I am suggesting then, is that if Miss B was our friend, it would be neither right, nor helpful to her, for us to offer advice about suffering, or against suicide, and certainly not if we had never been in her situation. But how would we feel if she then did take her own life, or persuade her doctors to withdraw her life-support? Perhaps we would feel guilty as well as deeply sad. Could we not have tried harder to persuade her to live? Yet that, surely, is not the point. If there was any substance to our guilt, it would be in relation to something else that the other paralysed woman said: ?I think she needs the kind of support I have had to get her through this difficulty.?
What someone in Miss B?s position needs from her friends, is not advice, but support - especially the kind of support that makes you feel that you are still part of the human race. That kind of support is given, most often, indirectly or non-verbally. It is given by responding to someone who is suffering with genuine recognition of them as themselves - not just as suffering individuals, but as the people they were, are, and may yet become. When a friend is literally laid low by suffering, that may remind us uncomfortably of our own frailty and mortality; and to defend ourselves against that, we may begin thinking of them as somehow different from us. But inside their own heads, they are not different - they are still the people they always were; and if we can recognise and respond to that, that is the best support we can give them.
From what has been reported, it sounds as if lack of precisely that kind of support from her doctors, is what led Miss B to take her case to court. The problem, as Miss B sees it, is that the doctors did not listen to her or take her seriously. This has been reported as a ?right to die? case. But perhaps it would be better to describe as a ?right to respect? case. That, of course, may not be how the doctors see it; and at second or third hand, we cannot know which view is nearer the truth. But if it is really about ?right to respect? rather than ?right to die?, and if the court now tells her doctors that they must respect Miss B?s wishes, will she persist in her wish to be allowed to die? We don?t know. But it is possible that, knowing that her wishes now will be respected, and that she will be allowed to die when she decides, Miss B may choose at least to try rehabilitation treatment, before finally deciding.
The important thing for us, however, is not to speculate about, or pass judgement on, Miss B or her doctors. It is rather, to ask whether we, when the occasion arises, are prepared to take another person as seriously as we take ourselves. And for the best Christian example of this, of course, we need look no farther than this morning?s lesson from St John?s gospel. Jesus did not judge the Samaritan woman at the well, but recognised and responded to her as the real person she was and might become.
There is something else, in this morning?s gospel, that touches on how we might respond were we friends of Miss B. Jesus talks about ?gathering fruit for eternal life?. Recent research shows that many people, who like Miss B who are forced by circumstances to face up to their mortality, ask whether there is more to life than this life. This question also, I think, is one we should be more reticent in answering than the church has sometimes been in the past. What eternal life means, is a mystery beyond our understanding. Yet it can also be part of our experience now. We may have a sense, and sometimes a deep assurance, of infinite and eternal love at work even in this world, raising us all up to the full potential we seek, but so often fail to find. This insight, again, is not something that we should use, to try to persuade people who are suffering to put up with their lot in the hope that they will be compensated hereafter. The challenge to all of us, rather, is deeper than this. It is not to talk about eternal life, but to live it here and now, by loving one another, and by trusting in the providence of Love Unknown, who by suffering on the cross of the world, is able to help those who suffer.
Let me add a brief footnote to this. It is not for us to judge whether Miss B is right or wrong to ask to be allowed to die. That is between her and God. But she is reported to have said that ?what would probably make a difference to my decision is if I had children.? These are particularly poignant, and also uncomfortable words to hear today, on Mothering Sunday. Yet the deep truth of human existence is not just that children need parents. It is also that we all need one another. No man, or woman, is an island. But do we feel that in our bones, and do we show it in our relationships with other people? The message is clear: trusting in the providence of Love Unknown, we must love one another. Or die.
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