HOT TOPIC: Assisted Suicide
By Michael Cook
The Saturday Mercury (Hobart), 22 May 2004

The tragic figures of John Godfrey and his mother Elizabeth Godfrey deserve enormous compassion, but no support whatsoever as martyrs for the cause of euthanasia.

In fact, Elizabeth's misery fits into a neat pattern of victimisation of women -- a victimisation in which they all too often meekly comply. When it comes to so-called "mercy killing", two-thirds of the killed are women and 70 per cent of the killers are men, according to a 2001 survey by psychologist Silvia Sara Canetto, of Colorado State University.

"Many women do not have the resources, the sense of entitlement or the power and freedom to make the choice they desire, especially when they are sick or disabled," she wrote.

The problem may be that sick and disabled women like Mrs Godfrey feel more of a burden than do sick and disabled men because, for the first time in their lives, they are being cared for rather than providing the care-giving. It is this diminished sense of self-worth which leads them to ask for death.

But this may represent a veiled request to live, Dr Canetto surmised. A woman may really be saying, "Do you care enough to want me alive and to be willing to share in my suffering?"

Dr Canetto has warned that the legalisation of euthanasia would only victimise more women. "If older women are uniquely affected by the legalisation of hastened death," she says, "then policies presented as 'neutral', enhancing self-determination, dignity and choice in death, may actually be dangerous to older women."

The media has provided only a sketchy account of the facts of the case, but it seems that the tragedy of the Godfreys is that the community allowed a fragile man with a history of mental illness to care for a depressed, suffering and elderly woman whom he loved. No wonder he cracked. Ultimately it is our fault that the pressures on him became intolerable.

And this is why calls to legalise assisted suicide are terribly misguided. Legalised mercy killing would increase the pressure on elderly women to die rather than burden their loved ones. And it would decrease the pressure on the government to provide adequate palliative care for the dying and support for their carers. Do we want to live in a society where death is the penalty for loneliness, dependence and pain?