{"id":2935,"date":"2015-07-23T20:17:12","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T19:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=2935"},"modified":"2015-07-23T20:17:12","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T19:17:12","slug":"our-lives-are-not-actually-our-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2015\/07\/23\/our-lives-are-not-actually-our-own\/","title":{"rendered":"“Our lives are not actually our own”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long-term readers of this blog will know that, every now and then, I have a look at the CMF’s blog. \u00a0This is largely because of my interest in the ethics of assisted dying, and the blog is actually a pretty good way into developments on the other side of the lines. \u00a0There is rarely, if ever, anything new produced that’d move the argument on – but then, those of us who’re sympathetic to legalisation really aren’t doing any better. \u00a0It’s become rather a sterile debate.<\/p>\n

I do tend to blank out the apologetics; bet every now and again, something catches my eye: a part of\u00a0this recent post<\/a><\/span>, about the latest attempt to introduce an assisted dying Bill into Parliament, is one such. \u00a0There’s a part where Peter Saunders claims that the Sermon on the Mount moved away from a literal take on the prohibition of murder to something more in keeping with the spirit of the law. \u00a0This, though, prompts a question for me:\u00a0why can’t we accommodate a person’s desire to die\u00a0within the general law against killing? \u00a0Might that desire mean that assistance is properly described as something other than murder?\u00a0 It is tempting to infer from what Saunders says elsewhere that he is at least not too worried about some forms of intentional killing: writing about the Kermit Gosnell<\/a><\/span> story a couple of years ago,\u00a0his headline noted<\/a><\/span> that Gosnell may face the death penalty – but the body text did not mention that at all, let alone take a position on it. \u00a0Yet if all deliberate killing is so straightforwardly wrong, we might expect that<\/em> killing at least to be noted. \u00a0If deliberate killing by means of the death penalty doesn’t raise a peep of objection, then we might wonder why assisting in someone’s death at that person’s behest is more of a worry.<\/p>\n

Saunders does have an answer to this query, though:<\/p>\n

Our lives are not actually our own. Suicide (and therefore assisted suicide) is therefore equally morally wrong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This ought to provide him with a reason to oppose the death penalty; but it does provide a reason to object to assisted dying. \u00a0On the face of it, it also provides a reason to object to life-saving medicine, too, since that would appear to be just as much a usurpation as ending someone’s life. \u00a0(Maybe the response\u00a0here is that people who save lives are being used by the deity. \u00a0But then again, couldn’t the same be said for people who help end them? \u00a0Might they not be ministers of grace?)<\/p>\n

Forget all that, though. \u00a0It’s the statement itself that’s really striking: our lives are not ours. \u00a0It could be that they are not\u00a0anyone’s<\/em> – but that wouldn’t obviously furnish a prohibition on suicide or assisted death; so the implication must be that our lives belong to someone else. \u00a0If that someone else turned out to be another person, we’d repudiate it as tyranny or slavery. \u00a0People who belong to other people are un-people: mere things. \u00a0(That’s what slavery does: by allowing Smith to belong to Jones, it treats Smith as a thing; and if he’s a thing, it’s absurd that his life could be his, so it might as well be\u00a0Jones’.)<\/p>\n

I don’t think that Saunders thinks that we do belong to another person. \u00a0I think he thinks we (or our lives, though I’m not sure that that makes a difference) belong to Yahweh. \u00a0But that looks no less like tyranny, and no less\u00a0contemptible. \u00a0Repudiating that divine tyranny seems to be admirable for the same reason as it would be in cases of human tyranny. \u00a0It reduces persons to things. \u00a0Things have no moral agency. \u00a0They’re brute material for an unseen power and unseen purpose.<\/p>\n

I don’t like that view of human life. \u00a0Were it true, it’d be a life I’d\u00a0prefer not to live, quite aside from any medical problems I might have. \u00a0Telling me it’d be wrong to end it would be rather like telling a slave that it’s wrong to escape because of the property rights of slave-owners. \u00a0Nuts to that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long-term readers of this blog will know that, every now and then, I have a look at the CMF’s blog. \u00a0This is largely because of my interest in the ethics of assisted dying, and the blog is actually a pretty good way into developments on the other side of the lines. \u00a0There is rarely, if […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1240,563,591,328,472],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogosphere","category-language","category-life-and-death","category-philosophy","category-thinking-aloud"],"yoast_head":"\n"Our lives are not actually our own" - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2015\/07\/23\/our-lives-are-not-actually-our-own\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Our lives are not actually our own" - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Long-term readers of this blog will know that, every now and then, I have a look at the CMF’s blog. \u00a0This is largely because of my interest in the ethics of assisted dying, and the blog is actually a pretty good way into developments on the other side of the lines. \u00a0There is rarely, if [...]Read More...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2015\/07\/23\/our-lives-are-not-actually-our-own\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-07-23T19:17:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"BMJ\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"BMJ\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2015\\\/07\\\/23\\\/our-lives-are-not-actually-our-own\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2015\\\/07\\\/23\\\/our-lives-are-not-actually-our-own\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"BMJ\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ba3da426ed20e8f1d933ca367d8216fe\"},\"headline\":\"“Our lives are not actually our own”\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-07-23T19:17:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2015\\\/07\\\/23\\\/our-lives-are-not-actually-our-own\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":720,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Blogosphere\",\"language\",\"Life and Death\",\"Philosophy\",\"Thinking Aloud\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2015\\\/07\\\/23\\\/our-lives-are-not-actually-our-own\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2015\\\/07\\\/23\\\/our-lives-are-not-actually-our-own\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogs.bmj.com\\\/medical-ethics\\\/2015\\\/07\\\/23\\\/our-lives-are-not-actually-our-own\\\/\",\"name\":\"\\\"Our lives are not actually our own\\\" - 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