A heartbreaking story took place in Bangalore, India during March.
A young girl was married, at her father’s insistence, on her 18th birthday to a man in their community. She had had a good education through the Divya Shanthi Christian Association in Bangalore. ‘Sporty’, she had won many championships at state level. It was hoped she could compete at national level. She was enrolled in a pre-university college with a scholarship.
Her future looked very bright. Her education in a Christian school had taught her to think for herself. At this mixed school she had been able to get on with boys on equal terms.
Arranged marriage
But this led to a culture clash with her parents. Her home was a traditional Indian household. Her father was a labourer and her mother worked in the home. They were worried about her familiarity with boys and they took her independence of mind as being ‘lippy’.
So her parents arranged for her to be married as soon as it was legal, on her eighteenth birthday. She lived, as many newlyweds do, with her husband and his parents. Her father paid a dowry of £300 but her in-laws were not satisfied. This led to tension in her new home. Within three months matters came to a head. In a tiff with her mother-in-law the new bride said: ‘Then if you want more money, you’ll have to kill me.’ A dowry once given is kept by the bridegroom’s family. If they cannot secure any increase many brides are killed to enable a second marriage and a second dowry.
And that is what is happened. The mother-in-law doused her in kerosene and set her alight. She died of 90% burns. But not before she told people in the hospital that this was not suicide, but murder. Many dowry deaths are presented as suicides.
Prescribing fatal drugs
Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, Lord Falconer is due to take his Bill on assisted dying to a second reading in the House of Lords. This Bill provides for a medical practitioner to be able to prescribe fatal drugs to a patient with six months or less to live who makes such a request.
Consequentialist arguments flow in the press about the effects of such a law in Oregon, USA; the issues of public safety, the probable pressures on vulnerable people to hasten their end and the public perception of doctors.
Where’s the pressure coming from?
But consider this: where is the pressure coming from to overturn the wisdom of centuries and the teaching of religions that life is a gift from God and that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away? Is it coming from the homes of labourers in Bangalore where life is a constant struggle; where parents fear for their daughters; where young brides fear death at the hands of their in-laws for more dowry? Is it coming from the slums of Nairobi or the townships of Cape Town where people are oppressed, trodden down, have poor health, and minimal health care? Is it coming from South Sudan where civil war is threatening the hopes of a new nation recently escaped from the oppression of Khartoum?
No. It is coming from highly successful Western people who have been very well provided for, with strong, robust pension provision and fine homes. Many have wanted for nothing throughout their lives.
Now the argument is presented that such people, coming to the final weeks of their lives, want to be spared – and to spare their families – the experience of the indignity of being helpless, having to be fed and washed and cleaned.
The question is: ‘Where have these people been?’ or ‘What do they think life is all about?’. We came into the world needing to be fed and washed and cleaned – being totally dependent on others. At the end, sans every-thing, such will also be the fate of some of us.
Is life only sustainable if we are independent and can stand on our dignity?
What is at issue in the arguments about assisted dying is not the issue of unbearable pain. That has been well catered for by the palliative care movement. What is at issue is the very definition and nature of human life.
Covenant with death
In Bangalore the churches are campaigning for an end to accelerated deaths of young brides for the economic gain of poor families. In London some of the world’s wealthiest people are campaigning for the right to die for those who want to be spared loss of dignity. Well may Isaiah write: ‘We have entered into a covenant with death’ (Isaiah 28.15).
