From Sanctity of Human Life to Individual Autonomy

Reprinted with permission from the Jan/Feb 2016 issue of Faith Today.

Understanding how Canada has changed can help us in the debate on euthanasia

BRUCE J. CLEMENGER

Two Supreme Court rulings, in 1993 and 2015, made opposite conclusions on the permissibility of assisted suicide and euthanasia. What has changed to recast the debate?

In the 1993 Rodriguez case, the prevailing norm that informed the ruling was the sanctity of human life. In the remarkably similar Carter case in 2015, the prevailing norm has become individual autonomy.

The Rodriguez case was decided by the most narrow of margins – five to four. The majority concluded a complete ban on assisted suicide was consistent with promoting the sanctity of human life.

The EFC and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops were the interveners who made the argument that the sanctity of human life was the principle that animated our health care and social welfare systems.

To allow assisted suicide, we argued, would undermine society’s commitment to the sanctity of human life. The majority accepted the argument, noting the sanctity of human life could be held as a secular principle as well as a religious one.

In its philosophical sense, autonomy presumes no prior and external authority to the self

Twenty-some years later in the Carter case, the Supreme Court still affirmed the sanctity of human life was "one of our most fundamental societal values" – but also concluded, nine to zero, that human autonomy should prevail. They agreed that in some circumstances the individual pursuit of autonomy trumped society’s commitment to the sanctity of human life.

In a recent essay in the National Post, Joseph Bream discusses this shift and how death will become a civil servant. "He will operate in the open, during business hours, with a budget and a boss. His work will be humanized and bureaucratized. Death will be licensed, regulated and empowered by law to solve a public policy problem – the unacceptability to certain people of certain types of dying."

Individual autonomy entails much more than individuality and individual freedom and responsibility (which are of course exercised in cultures, communities, families and institutions). In its philosophical sense, autonomy presumes no prior and external authority to the self. There is no community that defines us, only associations we choose to join.

All attachments that once were understood to comprise personhood are secondary and artificial – our identity is something we create by an exercise of our will. There is no normativity. Legitimacy is something we confer, not acknowledge.

Contrast this to the sanctity of human life, a norm that transcends the individual. It binds us together in the stewardship of all human life and a sense of mutual responsibility. It makes our care for others more than a calculus of personal advantage – it is a duty, not a choice. It grounds rights and responsibilities in something greater than the individual, and can sustain norms and principles that guide our lives together in something other than self-interest.

It was also the animating factor behind the development of many of our social welfare and educational institutions, as well as universal medical care. Will a pre-eminent commitment to individual autonomy be able to sustain these?

The Supreme Court chose to shift the lens through which it interprets Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its guarantee of life, liberty and security of the person. The result is that what was once held to be illegal to protect us all now becomes legal for the sake of a few.

In the absence of any broader public forum that fosters dialogue and gives definition to our norms and values, the Supreme Court identifies the Charter values that shape their interpretation of the Charter.

Canadian society has been influenced by an ascendancy of individual autonomy over the past 50 years, and that influences the way we understand what is good and what we should expect from one another.

In the months to come there will be plenty of debate about assisted suicide and whether it will become a government service provided as an extension of health care. This should prompt a substantial reflection and dialogue among Canadians about the duty of care we owe one another, and how we care for people in the shadow of death. Are we as Canadians up to the challenge?

Author: Bruce J. Clemenger