The End of Life Choice Act will harm NZ suicide prevention efforts
Yesterday was World Suicide Prevention Day, the awareness day observed every year in order to promote global commitment to suicide prevention strategies.
In just a few weeks time, our country will be asked to vote on whether an Act that will legalise and institutionalise the practice of assisted suicide should be allowed to become law in New Zealand.
To say that the End of Life Choice Act stands in stark opposition to yesterday’s anti-suicide awareness day is an understatement.
Thinking we can normalise some suicides, even going so far as to call them good and dignified, while, at the same time claiming that we can continue to maintain a strong commitment to ending other suicides is, at best, wishful thinking.
If we legalise assisted suicide we will forever change the social landscape of New Zealand by creating a new class of people whose suicides we won’t just endorse, but which we will also actively participate in.
The practical effect of this will be to weaken the currently black and white line in the sand we adhere to when it comes to this issue.
No society can continue to maintain strong resistance to suicide if it legally enshrines the belief that not all suicides are tragic or unnecessary.
Over successive generations the effect of this normalisation of suicide will be devastating to our country, in particular the way that it will devalue the importance of life as the highest good that must always be fought for.
It is naive to think that future generations of young people can be raised in such a society without being scathed in their attitudes towards suicide and the value of life.
As much as we like to try and tell ourselves otherwise, being terminally ill and involving the healthcare system doesn’t actually create a substantive point of difference when it comes to taking your own life.
The underlying motivation remains exactly the same as it does in every other act of suicide - the belief that your life is no longer worth living, or lacks meaning because of the struggles you face.
When you add to this the fact that the state will be actively endorsing such beliefs and assisting certain people to fulfil these desires, you can see how corrosive this will be to New Zealand’s anti-suicide efforts.
As if that weren’t bad enough, legalised assisted suicide is also the fruit of a radical individualism which constantly seeks to justify itself by loudly trumpeting the slogan ‘my body, my choice.’
This is an ideology that wants us to accept the notion that my death should be no concern of yours and in return, your death is no concern of mine.
The net effect of this would be a New Zealand society which is forming its citizens to believe that we have no investment whatsoever in how each others lives come to an end.
We are deluding ourselves if we think that not one of these factors will negatively impact suicide prevention efforts and our ultimate hope of achieving victory in the fight against suicide in Aotearoa.