Right to die?

Anthony Westell had a column entitled, "It's my right to die when I want to" (Globe, Nov. 29, 2004). Nothing else that he has written in half a century of journalism, he said, has evoked such a reaction as a column he wrote in September arguing the case for assisted suicide. He welcomes further debate on the topic, but realizes it will be useless; "it will settle nothing because the issue of the right to die pits civil rights against a moral code derived from religious conviction. Those favouring the right to assisted suicide, or abortion, or gay marriage, believe that the state should limit the liberty of the individual only when some clear public interest is involved." Opponents insist that the rights of the individual must take second place to what they believe to be God's prerogative as to when a person should die.

"Whenever religion enters politics," Westell contends, "debate becomes endless and irreconcilable." While politicians may well be influenced by religious belief, "their religion is not evidence or even argument, but merely a statement of faith." So it is important "that the debate should be framed outside the religious box."

P.S. There can be no solution as long as people such as Anthony Westell, a lapsed Catholic, continue to create non-existing "civil rights." There is no "right" to die, just as there is no "right" to kill oneself a "right" to kill babies, or a 'right" to re-invent marriage. Evil can never be a "right."