The Slippery Slope

Opponents of assisted suicide often warn how legalizing it would represent a slippery slope. That’s not an argument convincing to those who have slid very far down a slope themselves.

And nor should it be.

STV News:

The family of a great grandmother who died from multiple sclerosis has published harrowing photographs of her final hours. Flora Lorimer’s husband and daughter say she wanted to die for two years before she finally passed away last month aged 68.

Tom, 69, and Tracey Taylor’s wish is that the shocking images will highlight Flora’s battle and persuade politicians to make assisted suicide legal in Scotland. Flora was diagnosed with the disease at 21 years old after noticing she had started dragging her leg. Her condition worsened and it got to the stage when it was taking an hour to walk half a mile to the shops from home. Before long the much-loved great grandmother needed a wheelchair.

Ms Taylor, from Glenrothes, Fife, told STV News: : “She cried all the time, in pain, all the time. I would come and visit every day and she would say to me, ‘I don’t want to be here tomorrow. Please take my life, I don’t want to be here tomorrow.’

“She’d had enough and we couldn’t do anything to help her – nothing.”

Asked why they had taken the decision to release the images, Ms Taylor said: “Everybody needs to see why we are fighting for this. People don’t see these pictures. These are the ones that are hidden away and they need to be shown.

“I got agreement from my mum. She wanted everyone to see why we are fighting for this and why she did want to die.

“It’s happening everywhere all over the world and it shouldn’t be. We should have the right to make our own decision….”

Flora’s condition began to dramatically worsen around two years ago when she lost the function in her hands and became too weak to even text friends. She lost the function to do anything for herself and became completely bed bound around a year ago.

It was from then, her grieving daughter and husband say, that Flora began to express her wish to end her battle with the disease.

Ms Taylor went on: “She had no leg use, no arm use, couldn’t wipe her nose, had to ask to have her head scratched and then eventually she couldn’t even talk. She could hardly communicate with us.

“She found it very hard. We could hear her, just, but she found it very hard to talk to us.

“I couldn’t kill my mum. I wanted to but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that. I wanted the doctors to do that. I wanted the doctors to help her do it herself.  She needed to do it herself, not us doing it. Whenever she was ready we would have all got together, let her take her pill, her wee drink of juice, let her go to sleep with all of us round her and drift away. But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all. We were all around her but it wasn’t peaceful. She lay in her bed for over a year not moving, not doing anything, just lying there getting bed sores everywhere. She suffered – torture. She was tortured for two years because we couldn’t do anything.”

I respect—even if I disagree with— the arguments of those who object on rational grounds—the slippery slope and all that— to legalizing assisted suicide, but as for those, such as Boston’s egregious “Cardinal Sean” (who fought so hard against the Massachusetts’ ‘Death with Dignity’ initiative) whose objections are rooted in religious faith it’s a somewhat different matter. They are entitled to their beliefs in this matter and to live (and die) by them but to insist-as a matter of law-that others should be forced to do the same is arrogant, insolent and, all too often, horribly cruel.