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Suicide is Painful
Ann Farmer
Readers may recall those lines from the theme of the television series M*A*S*H, ‘suicide is painless/ it brings on many changes’; it was a satire on war - but how many have been lulled into the false belief that suicide really is painless? I certainly have.
I have been ill for over seven years with a disabling condition which started with weakness in the arms, then the legs, and also affects my balance, my eyes, my digestive system, and my cognitive function, especially the ability to ‘think on my feet’. Everything is tiring. I use two sticks, and if I walk too far I have a tendency to keel over. I am severely restricted in getting out - mostly the mere suggestion is like asking someone who has just run a marathon to climb a mountain. After repeated attempts at diagnosis, which ruled out degenerative disease, I call it ME.
Though I know many people who are much worse off; for a formerly active person, this is a depressing situation, and I don’t doubt that if I were to be found dead beside an empty pill bottle, many would think it quite understandable, even commendable; and that if my husband aided me, he would be treated compassionately by the judiciary. But my disabling condition is not the problem; I want to live - that is my problem. With a tendency to become quickly dehydrated, I fear that I may end up in hospital at some point, and either by accident or design end up dead. Since 2005 it has been legal to deprive patients of artificially delivered nutrition and hydration, and as at times I have been unable to take the tiniest sip of water without suffering a severe reaction, the thought of legalised therapeutic dehydration bothers me much more than the fear of my family being prosecuted for helping me to commit suicide. Should I be unable to communicate, I have to hope that medical staff would not interpret my condition as a jolly good reason for not treating me. This has happened, as organisations like SPUC and ALERT can attest, mainly to the elderly.
That is all very well, the euthanasia/assisted suicide campaigners say, but do not impose your choice on others. Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether my life is mine to dispose of, I do not believe that the majority of disabled and sick people would like to commit suicide. Of course, if it is ever legalised (as with abortion) many will seek it, because the feeling of being a burden or a nuisance, the fear of annoying or upsetting people by asking for help, is acute. The unthinkable will quickly become acceptable, especially when there are other motives at play.
In the 1930s the euthanasia campaign’s propaganda was aimed at helping the dying, but the small print revealed that it was the living that were viewed as the real problem: the disabled people who persisted in clinging to life, making things unbearable for everyone else, and worst of all, costing money. Special disgust was reserved for mentally handicapped people and babies described as monsters – the rhetoric of revulsion, as I call it in my book.* The old euthanasia campaign was fuelled by eugenics and also by the obsession that there were too many people - that charity, welfare measures and modern medicine (this was when TB was still deadly) were keeping alive thousands who, in the good old days, would have been killed off by Mother Nature. Thus the sick, the disabled, the mentally deficient and many of the poor were marked down as expendable.
Hitler’s euthanasia programme almost dealt a death blow to the campaign, laying bare the dangers lurking behind the propaganda, but the real killer was improvements in health care. Indeed, some campaigners lamented that such developments made it difficult to put their case. But after the 1967 Abortion Act – which was introduced for ‘compassionate’ reasons – a ‘woman’s right to choose’ meant that improvements in treatment or hospice care were immaterial: individual choice, it was argued, should be paramount.
This takes us back to the original problem (as the euthanasia/suicide campaign saw it) of disabled and sick people not actually wanting to die - if we did, it would be like a tidal wave that no parliamentarian could withstand. It is not the physically impaired that are at risk of suicide, but the mentally fragile: these are the people who fling themselves off bridges or cliffs or high buildings; no one suggests that their mental agony be cut short by giving them a helpful push. However, it could be that the only reason disabled people do not take such drastic steps is because we are physically incapable of it, but we don’t tend to opt for easier methods either; despite this, the euthanasia campaign would like us to be able to choose to be given a dose of barbiturates; well, we want to be helped out – but not like that.
Again, the euthanasia advocate would argue that this is just one person’s opinion. But I think I can claim some insight into the kind of mental state that leads to suicide. Many years ago, beginning in my teens, I was afflicted with depression and would experience thoughts of suicide; a series of mind-numbing jobs didn’t help and there were also transient symptoms of the condition which now disables me. But the biggest factor was spiritual: having, as a young person, discarded my religion, I was haunted by hopelessness, by the feeling that nothing really mattered. Fear circled overhead like a great black bird, threatening to come down and perch on my shoulder. Nowadays the helpful atheist will pop up to tell us not to worry, there is probably no God; but once we get rid of God, we get rid of Heaven. That there would be no Hell either does not help the depressive to live, when they are already experiencing Hell on earth; if death means oblivion, then that is a plus point in favour of suicide.
Little was said in those days about depression, but there were no internet websites which encourage vulnerable teens to commit suicide; the news media did not harp on tragic suicide cases while failing to explore the ramifications of legalisation. Medical advances were hailed as a good thing; people did not, in general, mutter darkly about the burden of ageing. Most young people had been brought up with some sort of religious teaching. Thanks to that I was able, in a desperate moment, to beg God to let me know if He was there. The mental agony slackened for an instant, and things seemed slightly easier after that.
It was a slow process, but eventually things came right; paradoxically, those who believe in an afterlife are less prone to kill themselves; God is a God of life, not death. For some reason, the nuns’ teaching about presumption and despair being sinful had remained with me, and yet, even after finding God, thoughts of suicide would occasionally trouble me. Until, that is, I realised that the Devil tempts us to despair in a weak moment. Much as I appreciate the Church’s teaching that the fate of suicides is subject to God’s mercy, even the faintest risk of spending all eternity in the company of Satan was enough to put me off the idea. Although I have had one bad bout of depression since then, it was not made even darker by suicidal thoughts.
You may notice that I never considered the terrible effects of suicide on family and friends; but thoughts of suicide are like the mermaid’s song, luring us into deep waters only to leave us to drown. In a counter bid to lure depressives back into the light, I wrote a poem called ‘Thoughts of Suicide’ and made the opening verses deliberately dark, because I know how their minds work.
The danger never goes away completely – I had a brief, despairing thought the other day, after reading yet more compelling arguments about how disabled people should be allowed to choose assisted suicide; I laughed at the Devil – he never gives up – but with religion being swept out of the public square, the chances of depressed young people committing suicide have never been higher. If, years ago, I had given in to a moment of despair, four people would not have been born, and maybe others would have followed my example, stricken by grief or guilt. At least we used to have the examples of the saints, both religious and secular - people like Elizabeth Fry, Grace Darling and Florence Nightingale - to help us through the dark patches in life. Nowadays, for youth, the most prominent example of moral courage is the spectacle of people travelling to Switzerland to exercise their choice in dying. Young people need to know that: in such circumstances it is more courageous to live than to die - that beneath the romantic gloss bestowed on the subject by the current media love affair, suicide is not painless. Neither is life, but with life there is hope - there is choice, too, despite the other false claim of the suicide campaign, because suicide is the final choice. That is why this year’s ‘day for life’ was so important – but one day is not enough: the message of life needs to be emphasised all year round.
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* By Their Fruits: Eugenics, Population Control and the Abortion Campaign (Catholic University of America Press, 2008).
Government Induced Fertility Decline in the British Isles Press Release for use in conjunction with presentation at the BSPS, British Society for Population Studies conference in Southhampton University. September 18-19th
Click HERE to download graphs to accompany this release.
Patrick Carroll, a British actuary and statistician, is presenting the findings of a new study of the decline in British birth rates at the BSPS conference in Southampton September 18-19th . He considers several factors that have contributed to this trend and identifies several that are shaped by government policies.
The fall in the British birth rate since the 1960s can be linked to key decisions by governments which have had an impact on the birth rate though not designed to have that effect. If the task of reversing this decline in the birth rate is to be addressed it will require some government initiatives and for this it is necessary to identify relevant factors that are within the control of governments.
A parallel decline in the Birth rate in the Irish Republic is also examined with the differing impact of Irish legislation and government measures.
This paper identifies seven policy areas affecting fertility. The attached Power Point slides for presentation in Southampton illustrate the trends:
* Contraception. A marked decline in the birth rate in the 1970s followed the decision to make available contraceptives pills free from prescription charges in 1973. The decision to make contraceptives free of VAT in March 2006 is a further illustration of British government promotion of contraception.
The decline in the birth rate has been described as a “mirror image” of the increase in use of hormonal contraceptives by a leading British demographer.
*Abortion. In all parts of the British Isles, even in Ireland, the birth rate is now significantly below replacement level. And there is a close match between the shortfall below replacement level of the birth rate and the abortion rate. For the graphs illustrating this for Ireland the abortion rates have been computed using data on English abortions on Irish resident women. The 1967 Abortion Act does not apply to Northern Ireland or the Irish Republic and this is a factor contributing to a higher birth rate in Ireland.
The abortion rate in England has increased since the 1967 Abortion Act so that the average woman now has about 0.5 an abortion in England & Wales. More than 80% of British abortions are paid for by the NHS, National Health Service.
*Decline of Marriage.
Marriage rates of young women aged 20-24 have fallen and this has contributed to the decline of birth rates. While the birth rate has been declining, the proportion of births outside marriage has increased. This is a further factor leading to further decline of the birth rate as single parents are more reluctant to add to their families. The UK income tax system does little to reward marriage and the UK’s means-tested benefit systems make it difficult for single parents to marry.
* Divorce
Divorce legislation was revised in the UK and made divorce easier and divorce become much more common in the 1980s. This prevalence of divorce has also been a negative for stability and British family formation. Divorce of women aged 30 to 34 can reduce fertility. In the Irish Republic until recently this has been absent.
*Social Housing.
Privatisation of council houses in the 1980s has reduced family type housing availability and made housing for families with children more difficult to find for lower income families. This has been a negative for the birth rate, especially in Scotland and Northern Ireland where there has been a high proportion of social housing.
*Private Housing.
Increasing house prices merit more attention from demographers to assess their impact on family formation. The demise of mortgage interest relief in the 1980s has made it more difficult for young families with a mortgage to have more children. The continuation of mortgage interest relief in the Irish Republic has likewise helped to maintain a higher birth rate there. But higher house prices in the Republic are thought to now to be affecting the birth rate there negatively.
*Improved Career Opportunities for Women.
Improved opportunities for women in paid employment and equal access to better paid careers has been a factor reducing the birth rate. In an increasing number of households a woman is the highest paid provider, and such households have fewer children. This trend is partly brought about by government policies and government related agencies such as the Equal Opportunities Commission.
Patrick Carroll
Contact address
PAPRI, 35 Canonbury Road, London N1 2DG
Tel 020 7354 5667
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