{"id":5310,"date":"2014-11-05T04:57:06","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T12:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.consciencelaws.org\/?p=5310"},"modified":"2018-03-06T14:33:14","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T22:33:14","slug":"judgementalism-and-moralising-in-response-to-brittany-maynard-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.consciencelaws.org\/?p=5310","title":{"rendered":"Judgementalism and moralising in response to Brittany Maynard suicide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sean Murphy*<\/a><\/p>\n

On 1 November, Brittany Maynard, \u00a0a 29 year old woman with terminal brain cancer, committed suicide in Oregon State with the assistance of a physician (and, presumably, a pharmacist), who provided the lethal medication she consumed.\u00a0 Assisted suicide is legal in Oregon; that is why Maynard moved to the state.\u00a0 In the weeks leading up to her death she had become a celebrity because of her public advocacy of assisted suicide, augmented by\u00a0a kind of “countdown” to the date she had chosen to die. [NBC News<\/a>]<\/p>\n

It is not surprising that the announcement that she had\u00a0killed herself as planned was followed by\u00a0an outburst of judgementalism and moralising.<\/p>\n

Prominent bioethicist Arthur Caplan stated, “did nothing immoral when she took a lethal dose of pills.”\u00a0 He dismisses the view that “only God should decide when we die” because he finds that inconsistent with the existence of free choice, adding, “To see God as having to work through respirators, kidney dialysis and heart-lung machines to decide when you will die is to trivialize the divine.” [Brittany Maynard’s Death Was an Ethical Choice<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n

Chuck Currie, a minister of the United Church of Christ in Oregon, also insisted that Maynard had “made a moral choice.”\u00a0 He\u00a0described\u00a0committing suicide under the terms of the Oregon law as taking “medically appropriate steps to make that death as painless and dignified as possible” – an appropriate exercise\u00a0of “moral agency.”\u00a0 Like Caplan, his theological views about the nature of God inform his approach to the issue. [Brittany Maynard Made A Moral Choice<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n

Writing in the New York Post<\/em>, Andrea Peyser did not explicitly address either moral or theological questions, but implicit in her headline and awestruck praise for Maynard’s suicide was the premise that the young woman had done a “brave” and good thing. [We should applaud terminally ill woman’s choice to\u00a0die<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n

In contrast, the head of the Catholic Church’s Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome, Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, said that Maynard’s killing herself\u00a0was a \u00a0“reprehensible” act that “in and of itself should be condemned,” though he stressed that he was speaking of the act of suicide itself,\u00a0not Maynard’s moral culpability.\u00a0[Daily News<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n

Those who condemn “judgementalism” and “moralising” ought to be offended by all<\/em> of these commentators, because all<\/em> of them –\u00a0 Caplan, Currie, Peyser and de Paula – have expressed moral or ethical judgements.\u00a0 To condemn suicide as “reprehensible” is\u00a0surely to make a moral or ethical judgement, but\u00a0moral judgement\u00a0is equally involved in a declaration that suicide\u00a0is a\u00a0“moral” or “ethical” choice that should be applauded.<\/p>\n

Health care workers who\u00a0refuse to participate in some\u00a0procedures for reasons of conscience or religion are often accused of being “judgemental” or of “moralising.”\u00a0 In fact,\u00a0as the preceding examples illustrate, their accusers are not infrequently\u00a0just as\u00a0“judgemental” and “moralistic.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Such\u00a0differences of\u00a0opinion\u00a0are not between moral or religious believers and unbelievers, but between\u00a0people who believe in different\u00a0moral absolutes.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0was\u00a0one of the\u00a0points made by Father Raymond De Souza\u00a0during an interview about assisted suicide on\u00a0CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Interviewer\u00a0Rex Murphy asked him if he thought that\u00a0\u00a0“the idea of any<\/em> absolute . . . even on the most difficult of questions\u00a0of life and death . . . are no longer sufficient . . . for the modern world.”\u00a0\u00a0Fr. De Souza’s\u00a0response:<\/p>\n

It’s a shift, Rex, I would say from one set of absolutes to the other.\u00a0 And the absolute would be the absolute goodness of life, in one case, to assertion of personal autonomy, which is becoming an absolute assertion.\u00a0And in fact in some of the arguments that have gone before the court, while acknowledging potential difficulties and philosophical objections, the right to personal autonomy trumps everything else.\u00a0 So, in a certain sense, I wouldn’t say we are moving away from absolutes, but shifting from one set of absolutes to the other . . . [34:21-\u00a035:24<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sean Murphy* On 1 November, Brittany Maynard, \u00a0a 29 year old woman with terminal brain cancer, committed suicide in Oregon State with the assistance of a physician (and, presumably, a pharmacist), who provided the lethal medication she consumed.\u00a0 Assisted suicide is legal in Oregon; that is why Maynard moved to the state.\u00a0 In the weeks … Continue reading “Judgementalism and moralising in response to Brittany Maynard suicide”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5432,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,508,463,459,36,287,511,28],"tags":[1406,317],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-5310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assisted-suicide","category-ethical-commentary","category-moral-reasoning","category-pluralism-secularism","category-essays","category-protection-of-conscience-project","category-society-politics","category-usa","tag-brittany-maynard","tag-sean-murphy"],"yoast_head":"\r\nJudgementalism and moralising in response to Brittany Maynard suicide - 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