THE APOTHEOSIS OF SELFISHNESS:

Swiss way of assisting suicide is dying without dignity (Sharon Owens, 28 January 2009, Belfast Telegraph)

I used to be a tacit supporter of assisted suicide but after watching A Short Stay in Switzerland, I’ve changed my mind.

This harrowing drama starring Julie Walters was based on the true story of one woman who chose to end her life via the Zurich clinic Dignitas rather than die a lingering death from a progressive, degenerative condition. The woman in question was Doctor Anne Turner from Bath in England; by all accounts a wise and feisty (and wealthy) lady who knew her own mind.

But what she had to put her three grown-up children through was very painful to watch, even in drama form. And by the end, I was forced to agree with Doctor Turner’s best friend, who tearfully accused her simply of showing off. Is this the ultimate form of middle-class intellectual snobbery, I wondered? Or did Anne Turner do the right thing when she trailed her sobbing children off to a bleak and soulless flat in Switzerland and made them witness her swallowing an overdose of barbiturates, while a volunteer filmed the suicide on a hand-held video camera?

Certainly the most morally repugnant aspect of it is that you require others to partake of evil.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 28, 2009 2:40 PM