Is euthanasia an extreme act of love?

How far would you go to take the life of a dear one? Undoubtedly, people are ready to go incredible lengths to preserve the lives of their kin or dear ones. Sometimes, they would even kill some to save some. Wars have been always justified in a similar way for thousands of years. My tribe's safety justifies me murdering you. Is crime, even in self-defense, justifiable? A crime is a crime. But, can we honestly be strict about it? What if your child was in danger? Would you not pull the trigger? Are you absolutely sure you would not eat the weakest member of a group if that would be the sole alternative to survive on some deserted island? Are you ready to say "no" to euthanasia if you find out you or a dear one have a degenerative fatal illness? Isn’t euthanasia a type of extreme love, after all?

An article written by self-titled scientific fundamentalist Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist, claims that “Dropping atomic bombs on Japan was an act of utmost compassion” and that “100 million people killed by bullets, one at a time, over weeks and months, is much, much worse, by any account, than 200,000 people killed in a flash of a second by atomic bombs”. I know, it sounds shocking to claim that Hiroshima was an act of mercy and some of the sensitive readers are appalled by this daring statement. If we can justify and excuse Hiroshima as an act of mass euthanasia, can we justify the Holocaust? If we create the precedent and come up with some decent retroactive reasoning, why not? But, is there any decent reasoning for mass murder? No, it is not.

However, Kanazawa justifies his reasoning “They would never have surrendered had we not dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That would have necessitated ground invasion of mainland Japan by the American forces, which would have led to many, many more Japanese to be killed, up to 100 million. You are equally dead whether you are killed by a bullet or an atomic bomb.” From this standpoint, Kanazawa, an utilitarian, used effortless calculus to justify a military action which killed, in the end, a quarter million people. Stalin was definitely not an idiot when he said that when one person dies is a tragedy, when millions die is just statistics. Kanazawa (whom I actually like in general) relies his argumentation on historic context and mentality of Japanese (very stereotyping and generalizing), claiming they would have died anyway in the name of the emperor and actually the US army just cut their tragedy short. Well, maybe the Jews exterminated during Holocaust would have died of cancer anyway, so Hitler just curbed their sufferance. Maybe Palestinians are meant to blow themselves up anyway, so why not bomb them? Maybe women have a tendency towards depression and suicide so why not put them on medication anyway? Maybe Blacks are meant to become gangsters and thieves so why not imprison them from early childhood? Maybe Italians will become drug dealers anyway, so why not ostracize them?

"What if" retroactive clauses are highly speculative and do not serve as a pretext for past actions. Moreover, human lives are not commensurable. We need to go down to the individual when dealing with lives. From a social perspective they are just collateral victims and we can find soothing words for each act: collateral victims, friendly-fire etc. Whatever keeps us psychologically comfortable. Justifying the H-Bomb by saying they would have committed suicide anyway is not an excuse. Not to mention the H-Bomb did not only kill 200,000 people, it killed them on a long term, created malformations, and made out of Hiroshima a spot of shame for the US. So much for excusing mass euthanasia.

What about individual euthanasia? Ramon Sampedro was a Spaniard who fought to be allowed to die for almost 28 years. He was quadriplegic, meaning he was paralyzed from his neck down, “a living head in a dead body”, as he said. He was immobilized in bed and was fed, washed, and tended by another adult. For any responsible person, emotionally and physically developed, being taken care of like that might lead to a feeling of discomfort, if not desperation, as it reminds us of childhood helplessness residues. While some might enjoy their regression state, most of us do not. Ramon was such a person. He wanted to be an adult and he thought that living a life where he depended entirely of someone else was humiliating. Moreover, a life where he could watch the nature just from the angle of his bed, was not a life (he had previously been a sea diver).

Yet, the society interfered with his choice of living his life with dignity and banned him not only to die, but banned him from living it with dignity. His basic rights of living with dignity were denied under some higher purpose and the feeble excuse that “god has given, god will take it away”. What if there is no God? Shall we deny the right of someone very palpable in the name of something indefinable? Can we deny people their basic right of owning their own life or the right to die? If it is our life, we are entitled to do whatever we please with it, live it or end it whenever we decide. This is about pro-freedom above all. And this freedom includes the liberty to end our lives, not only to live it with dignity or pay taxes or move freely. Assisted-suicide (and suicide in general) is a personal choice and we need to respect that. Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which most countries (including those which deny the right to die) subscribed to, decrees: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Obviously, those deciding on other people’s behalf (doctors, relatives) face a moral dilemma which leads to a psychological discomfort and, in time, if left unattended, to a certain imbalance. By definition, a dilemma implies two equally conclusive alternatives and most of the times equally unfavorable or mutually exclusive. A dilemma is what we wish we had in theory and never face. Yet, most of us, struggle with various ethical concepts (Philippa Foot’s “shall we save five people but kill one?” trolley problem) for which we have no definite answers, just speculations. Morals and ethics are not precise and exact sciences, unfortunately.

So, what makes a crime abominable? The number of victims? The lack of consent? Is a self-defense crime less of a crime? Is euthanasia a crime? Then what is life? Is breathing through machines a sufficient condition to be considered alive? Does consent make it morally correct? If not, why not, if we are equals in rights and dignity?

Ultimately, morality is not situated only in the upshot of a deed (death in this case) but also in rights. And it is our basic fundamental right to live with dignity. Or die with it.