The Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) has challenged a recent Lancet article defending assisted suicide.
The Lancet article dismissed the idea that the trauma and despair of those seeking assisted suicide could improve over time as “fallacious”.
It also dismissed objections from assisted suicide opponents that severe psychiatric suffering impairs genuine autonomy and that stronger social support or better care could change a person’s mind about suicide.
The article centred on the case of Noelia Castillo, a 25-year-old Spanish woman who died via euthanasia. Castillo, who died earlier this year, was neglected as a child, suffered from psychiatric problems, was allegedly the victim of a number of sexual assaults, and was left with paraplegia after a suicide attempt.
While conceding some of the valid points raised by the Lancet article, the CMF in its response said it risked “oversimplifying suicide prevention to merely a question of autonomous choice and capacity assessment”.
Instead, CMF argued that suicide prevention is about a “richer understanding of persons as relational, vulnerable, and capable of seeing the world differently when met with care”.
People can change when they receive or lack sufficient care and love and a sense of belonging. Feelings of despair can easily give sufferers a false impression about the future, CMF noted, while also arguing that accompanying a person who is suffering is better than helping them to end their lives.
CMF said, “Modern Western societies increasingly understand freedom as self-determination, the ability to define and direct my own life according to my own desires.
"Within that framework, compassion twists to become the affirmation of autonomous choices, even when that choice is death.
“Historically, however, suicide prevention emerged from a different understanding of the human person, in which dignity was not dependent upon independence, productivity, or present feelings of hope, and in which vulnerability ought to be met with care and accompaniment rather than affirmation of self-destructive desires.”
The group cited both Christian tradition and the Hippocratic oath, which views medical care as not about fulfilling the autonomous wishes of the patient, whatever they may be, but about working towards the good of the patient.
“Christian love means more than affirming immediate desires. Love seeks the good of the other person. It remains present in suffering. It bears burdens. It doesn’t reduce suffering people to their present despair. And it refuses to accept that hopelessness has the final word on a human life," said CMF.
Suicide, CMF suggested, is always a tragedy that needs to be resisted.
