The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (13): No Mercy For the Poor; Assisted Suicide in the UK

Dignitas clinic in Switzerland

(source)

In already mentioned in my previous, theoretical post on assisted suicide and euthanasia, that class discrimination is one of the problems arising from the policies of many countries: by outlawing the practice of assisted suicide, against sound moral arguments, they force people to go abroad to find an expensive solution in more liberal countries (such as Switzerland). Poor people wanting to exercise their right to self-determination, are stuck with the “cheap and dirty” solutions or with no solution at all if they are incapacitated and can’t take matters into their own hands.

The UK government seems particularly eager to deny people the right to decide on their own lives. Here’s a story highlighting the absurdity of UK policies regarding assisted suicide (although most other countries aren’t performing any better):

Dr Michael Irwin, 78, a former GP said today he hoped to be prosecuted for helping a terminally ill man to have an assisted suicide. … He wanted to highlight the “hypocrisy” of a system where the wealthy could pay to travel to Switzerland’s Dignitas clinic for euthanasia but the poor could not.

Dr. Michael Irwin

He will be questioned by police today after writing a cheque for £1,500 towards the cost of 58-year-old Raymond Cutkelvin’s procedure at Dignitas. Cutkelvin, of Hackney in east London, was diagnosed with an inoperable tumour of the pancreas in 2006 and died the following year at the clinic. His partner of 28 years, Alan Cutkelvin Rees, 57, accompanied him to Switzerland and has since been arrested on suspicion of aiding a suicide.

Irwin … would welcome a criminal trial. He said: “I’m 78, I’m a humanist, I want to try to make the world a better place and I hope that a trial might make that closer to utopia.” Irwin said he would give police all the details of the role he played in Cutkelvin’s death. “I shall be very open about having helped a man who was dying from advanced cancer of the pancreas, that in February 2007 he and his partner and I and two other people went to Zurich, to Dignitas, at that time.”

He said the couple were struggling financially, and he had paid a third of the total cost of the journey. “I think it is the height of hypocrisy in this country where if you have the money, you are terminally ill and you want to go to Switzerland, you can do so. Those who can’t afford it do not make that journey.” (source)

What next? A fine for British Airways for “aiding and abetting”? And this kind of class discrimination isn’t limited to assisted suicide:

It reminds me of one of the common arguments over abortion laws. Women in countries like Portugal (which has restrictive abortion laws) or states like South Dakota (where virtually no clinics provide the service) often need to travel far distances to obtain the service. Which means the rich are able, and the poor aren’t. (source)

This isn’t a defense of abortion – I’m generally reluctant to accept abortion rights. But I can see the negative consequences of banning abortion. Discrimination of the poor is one result. Health risks for the mother is another (see here and here).

More posts in this series on absurd human rights violations are here.