by Professor William Wagner
Five Law Lords just declared the taking of human life to be a human right. This raw exercise of judicial power creates a culture of death with grave implications for the United Kingdom.
Ultimately, state authorized suicide proceeds from the fundamentally erroneous premise that human life in certain conditions has no positive value. That premise has incalculably grave implications for all of us. When we abandon moral points of reference today, it becomes easy tomorrow to choose death in other ways, for other people, in other situations. For example, the Nazis first legalized voluntary euthanasia, then involuntarily killed hundreds of thousands of the mentally ill – all prior to the unspeakable tragedy of the holocaust. The Dutch started with assisted suicide, “progressed” to voluntary euthanasia, and now a physician kills patients there without their consent.
When the positive value of life becomes an immorally relative individual choice, very bad things always follow. Minutes after the law lords published their decision, the CEO of Dignity in Dying called on parliament to expand the scope of assisted killing in this nation. The grave implications for the United Kingdom accompanying such a choice are clear.
Professor William Wagner teaches Ethics and Constitutional Law at the Cooley Law School. Before joining academia, he served as a federal judge in the United States Courts.