SHEILA Duffy asks if those opposed to assisted suicide really believe that its advocates haven't "really thought through all the issues" concerning their proposal (Letters, August 26).
I should like to answer her resolutely in the affirmative and draw attention to her own organisation's name as a case in point. Ms Duffy's organisation is called My Life My Death My Choice, which proclaims in its very title the assertion of the primacy of individual autonomy. Its implication is that the wider societal concerns voiced by those such as John Deighan and the Catholic Church are either completely irrelevant to, or at the very least, merely secondary considerations in such a conflict.
Presumably Ms Duffy would have no objection to campaigns such as My Life My Drugs My Choice advocating the unrestricted use of narcotics, or My Life My Organs My Choice whereby spare kidneys could be auctioned off on eBay to the highest bidder.
Ms Duffy and her cohorts reject any legitimacy in the claim of the state to seek to moderate what they see as the self-regarding human behaviour of the individual citizen. They unequivocally disallow that the state has an interest in promoting minimum standards of decency or that individuals' actions can have broader ramifications for the society in which they live.
The promotion of their ideal and where it would eventually lead I shudder to consider, and threatens the prospect of a society I and many others would seek to avoid at all costs.
In the litany of supporters Ms Duffy invokes in alliance of her cause she lists a physicist, a popular author, a broadcast journalist, daytime television presenters, an educationalist and a politician- not one of whom's expertise lies in the field of moral philosophy.
Perhaps Mr Deighan could direct Ms Duffy to the relevant writings of Catholic thinkers such as Saint Augustine of Hippo or Saint Thomas Aquinas, whose particular proficiencies on such matters remain some of the highest intellectual achievements of all mankind.
Chris McLaughlin,
71b Braidpark Drive, Giffnock.
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