A VIEW OF EUTHANASIA

When he was Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr Keith Rayner brought compassion to the question of euthanasia with his statement that he believed it to be ethically right to allow a patient to die naturally rather than continue medical treatment.

Dr Rayner was referring to those whose lives are prolonged artificially through life-support systems or pain killing drugs.

His words shocked many, who in the words of the then Victorian president of the Right to Life Association, Mrs Margaret Tighe, believe that life is a gift from God and is not ours to give away.

Clergy of other denominations agreed with Dr Rayner.

Dr Francis Macnab of the Uniting Church spoke of "the act of helping people to die before they would otherwise do so, in order to relieve indignity and unnecessary suffering".

Another to accept Dr Rayner's view was Rabbi Betsy Torop of the Temple Beth Israel. She said that although Liberal Judaism does not permit an act that would actively cause death, it does allow the removal of an obstacle to death.

Dr Rayner, Dr Macnab and Rabbi Torop did not speak for the whole community. Nor did they claim to represent the views of all of their respective faiths, or even of their respective congregations. Nevertheless they voiced what is gradually becoming accepted societal opinion, recognition that if mortal suffering can be avoided, it is humane and acceptable that it should be.

This view was recently expressed by philosopher Dr Peter Singer in debate with Professor Raymond Gaita who took an opposing view.

In Dr Singer's opinion, (and mine), there is a wealth of difference between killing a person and letting nature take its course, even to the extent of dosing terminally ill persons with pain-killing drugs that have the side-effect of shortening a pain-laden life..

One is continually distressed at the loss of family, relations and friends. Some die suddenly, unexpectedly. They are the lucky ones. Others, not so fortunate, suffer pain for too long. These are the people to whom Dr Rayner was referring when he said that effort should be focused on providing the medical, emotional and spiritual recourses that can enable a good death.

Discussions on euthanasia seldom refer to the families of the terminally ill, to the effect that watching the suffering has on those who love that patient. Their lives can be shattered by the sight and sound of the person suffering, by their knowledge of the pain being borne. For them, as for the sufferer, death must surely come as a release, unwelcome in its finality, but compassionate in its effect.