Controlitas
Perhaps Controlitas would be a better name than Dignitas for the clinic in Switzerland where people go to be helped in killing themselves? Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore comments insightfully on the recent case of Jeff Spector who sadly decided to end his life this way. He had an inoperable tumour near his spinal column, and is quoted as saying that he “could not contemplate a future as a quadriplegic”, that he wished to exercise “my human right to dignity” and that he “wanted to be in control of the final stages of my life.”
Nobody wants to make the pain of Mr Spector’s family any worse than it is already, but surely Mr Moore is right to observe that the key word here is ‘control’. There are people who suffer from conditions such as, and even worse than, quadriplegia and do so with extraordinary dignity. Surely this is more about control than dignity.
Modern men and women, especially in the West, do not like the idea that they are not in control. We can control so much of our lives, and yet death remains the great uncontrollable. Most fundamentally, we cannot choose not to die. We cannot even choose when or how we will die – unless we kill ourselves. People speak of “the right to die”. Is it a right? More like a certainty, even a predicament. Our only hope, yet a sure hope, is to make peace with the Living One, who holds the keys of death and Hades.