As the battle for hearts and minds intensifies
in the euthanasia debate, one signal sounds loud and clear above the noise of
conflict: our troops in the pro-life camp are losing. The pro-death battalions have captured the high immoral
ground. Public opinion surveys consistently indicate that around three-quarters of those polled
favour assisted suicide, mercy killing, medical aid in dying or
other euphemisms for euthanasia dreamed up by the enemy.
The masses are not getting the
pro-life message. They have been persuaded through subtle brainwashing by an
acquiescent media that a 'right to die' based on individual autonomy transcends
the right to life - a self-evidently absurd proposition but one that has taken
root in the public mind. Let's consider two practical problems arising from
this misconception. The first concerns life insurance. To my knowledge, all
insurance companies exclude suicide from their life cover. Assisted suicide is
still suicide. Beneficiaries of a deceased's estate hoping to profit from his
death would therefore be sadly disappointed.
You could possibly argue that the
person who assisted the suicide was technically guilty of murder, thereby
relieving the deceased of ultimate responsibility. But the obvious defence to
this charge would be that the deceased asked his assistant to kill him. Taken
to its logical conclusion, this argument offers a splendid defence in a wide
spectrum of murder cases, viz: "The victim asked me to kill him. I merely
complied with his legal right to die by doing so." As the victim would no
longer be around to deny making any such request, the likely outcome would be
acquittal. Next case please.
These are valid arguments against
popular notions of a right to die and assisted death but you are unlikely to
encounter them in the media. The reason, it seems to me, is that the
pro-life movement is not militant enough. What it needs is a PR campaign to
rival that of the 'gay rights' fraternity - a tiny minority (1.5 per cent of
the population according to latest statistics) that has exerted an influence on society out of all proportion to its size.
Similar determination is urgently
needed by our own much larger minority group because the issue here is not just
sexual orientation but a matter of life and death. A slogan is called for, a
rallying cry to inspire a generation increasingly regarded as expendable. Keep
Breathing, the title of my second novel, could strike the necessary chord.
My book is an
attempt to promote the pro-life message to a largely hostile public through the
medium of popular fiction, something that does not seem to have been tried
before. You could call it a form of ideological evangelism...an attempt to
engage the man in the street on an emotional rather than intellectual level. I am convinced that for the pro-life message to prevail,
public attitudes must change. We may have lost the present PR battle but it is
vital for the sake of future generations that we win the war.
