“Right to die”

Editor—John Donne would have had no intention, had he been writing today, of establishing a male norm when he wrote: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” Grayling points out with great clarity how the right to life implicitly includes within itself a right to a certain basic quality of life, and therefore a right to die if that quality is impossible.¹

My ethics teacher reminded me that where there is a right, there is also a duty. Where there is a right to die, there is also a duty to live, and die, not just as an individual, but as a part of a web of all humanity, of all life, one can even argue as a part of the web of all being in the universe. My life, and my death, are not absolutely my own to do with just as I choose. I have a responsibility to live my life, and to die my death, to the best that I can in the light of this web of all being which I personalise as God.

The ongoing discussion on euthanasia and doctor assisted suicide entails the danger that we regard ourselves and our family and friends and patients as no more than individuals. Our rights must be exercised in the light of our duties. As Donne says, “Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in all mankind.”