An Instinct For Kindness

As I have written on Facebook, An Instinct For Kindness is a first class piece of dramatic writing, brilliantly performed, and should be nominated for an Olivier award. It's not a barrel of laughs, although there are some, but it makes the main point brilliantly. It's going to have a week's run in London - take advantage and see it if you missed it. It is a challenging and worthwhile evening. The details can be found at the web site, http://www.festivalhighlights.com/theatre/aninstinctforkindness.

The management at Royal & Derngate organised a debate after the show and I was privileged to be on the platform, along with the author and performer, Chris Larner, the Archdeacon of Northampton, Christine Allsopp, and a member of Leicester Secular Society, Harry Perry.

Harry's position is described on his blog, http://secsoc.blogspot.co.uk/ - in short he thinks that assisted suicide should be available, not to the terminally ill, as advocated by Dignity in Dying, but to anyone who is a) suicidal and b) so incapacitated they cannot kill themselves. It seems to me that one of the main arguments for not changing the law is that it would make it more likely that people going through a crisis, may be deeply but temporarily depressed, more likely to make a wrong decision. So I was surprised that he went so far as to undermine the point made by Chris Larner that what is needed is compassion and dignity for someone who is suffering extremely and terminally ill. It was an own goal against our side.

And indeed, that was the line Christine Allsopp took, very gently and carefully. She didn't mention Divine Authority or the Sanctity of Life, she expressed her concern for vulnerable people who might be adversely effected if we legalise assisted suicide, and she told of someone who had been seriously depressed, tried to kill himself but failed, and was now alive and glad to be so.

My approach was to indicate the three headings under which a decision needed to me made:

1. Autonomy – do we have the right and responsibility of making our own ethical decisions or do we have to defer to a higher authority?

2. Compassion – how do we best help those who are terminally ill and seriously suffering?

3. Safety – whatever legal framework emerges, what precautions are needed against abuse?

I then went on to say that the present situation amounts to cruelty to people like the one described by Chris Larner. It is unreasonable and unkind to defer giving help to them in favour of protection for a hypothetically threatened group, especially as experience where assisted suicide is legal has shown that these fears are unfounded.

The legal position was, up to 1961, that committing suicide was illegal. If you made an attempt and failed you could be sent to prison, which, as Chris Larner says in the show, “obviously helps”. The law was changed 50 years ago, but instead it is now a crime to help someone to do something that is not a crime, even if the non-criminal act happens abroad and therefore outside our jurisdiction, which makes no sense at all. The Director of Public Prosecutions in the last government made a clarification of the legal position to the effect that someone acting out of compassion and not for financial gain would be unlikely to be prosecuted. Sadly this puts a serious obstacle in the way of someone wanting to go to Dignitas. One of the things they insist on is a legal document confirming who you are and where you live, which has to be provided by a Notary Public, who normally charges a fee for their services. So the Notary's professional body has advised its members against giving this service as it is technically illegal. And the same applies to any other professional services needed such as an independent doctor, a travel agent, or a taxi to the airport.

And that's just one obstacle. Chris Larner put the total cost of going to Switzerland to die at about £14,000, way beyond the reach of many people who need it. There are some other interesting statistics: for example over 70% of those who take the first step towards an assisted suicide never take the second one. Having a potential safety net seems to be enough.

One lady in the audience was herself terminally ill and had the idea of going to Dignitas in mind. She had two friends along to support her. I felt that they were addressing what certain Christians often say publicly and hanging the attendant feelings on Christine Allsopp. That wasn't really fair, as she had shown nothing but sympathy and not voiced the usual line at all. None the less, it is true, as Chris Larner pointed out, we do live in an environment where a fairly authoritarian religion is part of the backdrop of life. In fact, I thought that Harry Perry was put out, or at least discomforted, by Christine failing to use the Sanctity of Life argument so often trotted out. He actually asked why she hadn't, and then rather erected a straw man to attack. In fact Christine had said that she believed in using her brain. (She is a former research chemist and her husband is a biologist.) My experience is that most religious people in this country take a similarly intelligent, tolerant and sympathetic view, but they are hidden by others of more extreme positions. I offered, as a summary of Christine Allsopp's view, that preaching at people is both arrogant and a waste of breath. I happen to think that is true whether the preacher is religious or not. Fundamentalism is not a good mark for a cause, and there are fundamentalist atheists as well as fundamentalist believers.

It's a truism that we all need to bear in mind that no matter how strong a person's convictions are on any issue other than matters of fact, that strength does not amount to being right. In an emotive issue such as this all parties need to keep that in the front of their minds and listen to other people's actual arguments sensitively and respond with equally good arguments, not just emotively. They also need to listen to the disputants' emotions and respond on that level too.

For myself, Chris' performance made me more aware than before of the extreme suffering and frustration that some people go through. The main character in the show, Chris' ex-wife Alison, said on the morning of her suicide, “I don't want to die. But I don't want to live any more like this.” And it was compassion for her terrible situation that moved him, and through him, the audience. To delay a change in the law seems to me to be cruelty, even if that delay is for the laudable reason of protecting apparently vulnerable people. Laudable but mistaken, I think, as experience is that these fears have not been fulfilled in practice in places where assisted suicide in strictly limited circumstances has been permitted. Cruelty is not acceptable and a way has to be found to bring relief to sufferers but with safeguards for people who feel or may be threatened by the change.