Talking Point: We all face the ancient great enemy

RICHARD CONDIE: case against voluntary assisted dying legislation.

DEATH is an uncomfortable topic. We don’t like talking about it very much.

Have you noticed that people rarely say that a loved one has “died”? We most often hear these days that they have “passed”, or “passed away”.

We do it with our children as well. We tell them that Granny has “gone to sleep” and try comforting them by saying that “she is now watching over us”.

We sanitise death with funerals in clinical funeral chapels where a curtain is drawn around the coffin or it disappears beneath the floor on a lift.

It was not always like this. Gone are the days when the men of the village dug the grave, carried the coffin to its edge, lowered it in, and then refilled the hole before they headed to the wake.

There was a certain reality to that experience. It was honest and raw and communicated the reality of the deep-seated horror of death.

But not talking about it and pretending that it is something else will never take it away. We all know the finality and pain of death.

The proposed Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation about to come before our parliament is another such

attempt to obscure reality.

The legislation allows for a person to take steps to end their own life as an act of their rational will. I know that many people would like to express their autonomy in that way. But the legislation specifically makes provision that a death achieved by these means is not to be referred to as “suicide”.

“Voluntary assisted dying” sounds so much more palatable than “voluntary assisted suicide”, but the semantics do not change the reality.

If you take your life by an overdose or take your life with drugs after discussing it with a doctor, it is still suicide.

We should be honest with each other about what this legislation actually is.

It will legalise a form of suicide in our community.

How will members of the Government justify spending the millions they do on suicide prevention, at the same time as legalising suicide in another form.

In the debate we are about to have, let’s be honest about death. The ancient text of the Bible gets it right I think when it calls death “the last great enemy”. It is still death and it is still an enemy no matter what you call it. Why would any government ruling for the protection and wellbeing of its people, legislate to allow suicide under any circumstances?

Dr Richard Condie is the Anglican Bishop of Tasmania.

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