Dying with Dignity?

Currently, there is a ‘Bill to make provision for assistance in achieving a dignified and peaceful end of life to qualifying persons and elated matters’ progressing through the legislative process in the chambers of government. The Bill titled ‘Dying with dignity’ is at Stage 3 of a 5-step process in the Dáil, before it will go to the Seanad for further perusal.

The Bill was opened to the public for consultation but the closing date for submissions was the 29th of January 2021. The committee received an enormous 1900 (circa) submission, which they are currently reviewing before sending it back to the Dáil for further debate with any agreed amendments; a vote will take place at Stage 5.

Once it reaches the Seanad lobbying potential for the public is limited; for all intents and purposes it is an administrative requirement for the enactment of laws in Ireland, and serves little or no functionality in addressing concerns or changing the content of the bill itself.

From the beginning the process has seemed both hurried and insidious. In the initial debate in the Dail on the 15th of September 2020 only seven minutes of debate time was given to the opposing side. TDs at large are either grossly ignorant of the Bills existence or completely swept into oblivion by the semantic and euphemistic language used in the Bill to masquerade the culling of the vulnerable population as ‘compassionate and dignified’. As George Orwell warned, those who control the language control the culture. This is the unmanned front line of this battle.

The time also just seems right. Against the backdrop of global chaos, the cultural manifestation of the historic and intergenerational embracing of Marxist ideology by many state institutions, and in a time where all conversation is monopolised by the topic of COVID19, there is a silent, creeping push by the enemy toward further degradation of our social fabric and our God-given rights.

There is no denying that Irish culture has metamorphosised over the past half-century and these changes were crystalised by the two referenda blows. Redefining marriage and the degradation of human life in removing the protection of the unborn from the constitution has been a lockstep to the downward trajectory of the faith of the Irish people at large. However, one would hope that this is one step too far for even the unsuspecting Irish voter.  

But without any opposition, euthanasia could be enshrined in Irish law as early as the end of the year. What would this mean for Ireland? The content of this bill, notwithstanding its title, implies that for patients with a terminal illness to die with dignity, they must end their own lives. The title suggests that to die naturally is undignified. Euphemisms used by proponents of the Bill suggest that any suffering is undignified; that the life of a patient suffering from a terminal illness is not worth preserving.

The Bill is a wedge stop for what is to come. The High Court in the Marie Fleming case ruled that: “even with the most rigorous systems of legislative checks and safeguards, it would be impossible to ensure that the aged, the disabled, the poor, the unwanted, the rejected, the lonely, the impulsive, the financially compromised and emotionally vulnerable would not avail of this option to avoid a sense of being a burden to their family and society”.

The Supreme Court, on appeal in 2013, warned of the difficulty in changing the law “without jeopardising an essential fabric of the legal system, namely respect for human life and compromising these protections for others”.

The government is submitting us to the soft tyranny of perpetual lockdowns and restricted freedoms, pushing an experimental gene therapy, and now in the chaos of it all, to those in vulnerable destitute they say... ‘here, die with dignity!... you feel like a burden?... Sure, I have a pill for that’!... then send you home to kill yourself, alone for all they care.  

This can only generate confusion and contradiction. On the one hand the Irish government invests in campaigns such as ‘darkness into light’ and on the other they purport that a reasonable solution to terminal illness is to kill yourself. Similar hypocrisy can be noted when the intentional destruction of human life is sold as a ‘woman’s health issue’. This confusion will necessary result when error seeks to take the place of truth.

For those who ponder the need for a referendum, there is no such requirement since the 2018 removal of the right to life from the Irish Constitution. This is merely a predictable and progressive necrosis in our now embraced culture of death.

We nevertheless have a duty to lobby our TDs and defend the God-given right to life which each human person has. But most importantly let us storm heaven with prayer on behalf of our country which has strayed so far from God in recent years. Without God there is no limit to the perverse moral aberrations if a society. This will inevitably bring sadness, chaos, malevolence. It is only by turning back to God and His law which will bring true happiness which us a foretaste of the happiness to come. Let us pray in this month of March that St Patrick might hasten this day.