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Fr Thomas Plant's avatar

You will be unsurprised to learn that I oppose the Assisted Dying bill both in principle, as well as on the procedural grounds that you outline here: though I think the two are not unrelated, and the procedural difficulties demonstrate the problem of the principle. One might in theory accept the proposition that any given person should be able to end their own life at a time and in a manner of their choosing (I don't), but if it is impossible to legislate for that position without it effectively coercing certain people to end their own lives at a time of somebody else's convenience (a cost-driven NHS, a greedy heir or inheritor, a manipulative spouse - q.v. Canada) then the principle itself is self-defeating.

Your insights into the potential Trump-Putin entente really help to clarify matters. Thank you. You made me wonder how St Thomas Aquinas might approach the same questions, since he would reach a very different conclusion to the first but largely the same to the latter.

Both ethical conundra would invoke the primary precept of promoting and preserving life. The Angelic Doctor's answer to the first problem would therefore be clear. The second would not simply be a utilitarian matter of calculating the number of lives lost, however, which seems to be the ethical system to which the USA's President-elect subscribes. The Ukrainians are, after all, seeking to preserve their own lives and protect their nation. Their self-defence is justified, subject to the proportionality of their response. Although the enemy death toll is huge, these are military casualties of war in defence of one's homeland, not bombardments of civilian areas. The issue is clouded by the matter of Russian conscription, since many of the dead presumably had no choice in serving. Nonetheless, as far as I know, Ukraine is not attacking civilians, unlike the aggressor. Their war is therefore just, and the proper ethical response is to support them militarily, rather than cede victory to the aggressor. You are therefore on the side of the angels, but for one caveat: the defence of Ukraine is right regardless of Russia's putative intentions for further expansion.

Perhaps the West's inconsistency in approaching both of these matters rests on a lack of any agreed means for making ethical decisions. There is an unspoken assumption of a utilitarian calculus, based on the greatest happiness of the greatest number of atomised individuals. I am not sure that your pragmatic response to Ukraine - namely, the main reason we should continue to offer support is because failure to do so will increase suffering later on - is robust enough a defence against the tyranny of the majority. It is not enough to protect the vulnerable from coerced legal suicide, the disabled from abortion, or the politically undesirable from being silenced, imprisoned or worse.

Your recognition of the basic desire of humans to do what is good rests on assumptions very close to St Thomas' broadly Platonic-Aristotelian position, and I applaud it; but this, I fear, is incompatible with the hedonistic path you wish to tread regarding assisted dying, which implies that the good equates to the avoidance of personal suffering. That way lies a majoritarian utilitarianism, and further down the path, Marxism. Might we not say rather that the absolute claims that natural law makes, along Thomistic lines, about the inherent and inalienable value of life are foundational to Western ethics, not least the doctrine of human rights, first of which is the right to life? It should be no surprise that when those foundations are undermined, the entire edifice of Western civilisation becomes so shaky that it loses the confidence of those both inside and outside it.

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