David Goodall, aged 104, is Australia’s oldest scientist. He’s in the news because he’s made it known that this month he will travel to Switzerland where arrangements will be made for his assisted suicide.
But he’s also said something else. He said he doesn’t see why he should have to travel abroad for something that he should be able to do at home.
Australia does not permit assisted suicide (except for one state, which permits it under very limited conditions for which Goodall does not qualify). Travelling from Australia to Switzerland is a very long, expensive trip. You could say Australia’s law, in practice, discriminates in favour of the affluent, who can afford assisted suicide. The law effectively only bars the less well-off from doing what the affluent can.
Does that make Australia’s law unjust and discriminatory? I think the vast majority of us would say no. And we’d be right.
Discrimination isn’t just about difference of outcome; it’s about justice and what’s right. Giving different students different grades is a difference of outcome; but it’s not unjust if the grades are right.
We cannot follow other countries if we think what they’re doing is wrong – even if the practical effect is to permit the affluent to shop around international jurisdictions, while the rest of us are restricted in what we can do.
It’s a global world so let’s break out of the European bubble for just a moment. Tunisia is the only Arab country that does not permit polygyny at all. Would a Tunisian be right to object that his country’s laws are discriminatory and unjust because an affluent, globe-trotting Tunisian could have several wives just by maintaining a home in (say) Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or even Lebanon?
I think we would all understand if this man were told that the overriding issue of justice here was the status of women, and that Tunisia was prepared to be in a minority of one. Justice is not just a matter of not letting people get away with stuff. It’s also about taking an articulate stand in favour of some values over others.
The relevant debate should be about the values, not about whether everyone will be strictly tied to them in practice.
It’s not just a global world; it’s a world of revolutionary scientific breakthroughs, year on year. It’s no longer science fiction to anticipate a world where, technically, it would be possible to have human cloning or to create chimeras – hybrid life-forms – that permit particular human organs to be grown for transplantation. It’s just a matter of time and whether there will be a jurisdiction to permit it.
Ten years ago someone wagered there will be. The French futurist, Jacques Attali, wrote he anticipated a world which would have ‘genetic havens’ that would operate like tax havens: a resource for the globe-trotting rich to get what they can’t get at home.
We should deliberate the issues, not race the changes through
Suppose this prediction comes true. Would that in itself be an argument, therefore, for us to liberalise and regulate human cloning? If the rich can do it, why can’t everyone?
Does anyone really have any difficulty seeing that the human cloning argument cannot be boiled down to whether the rich can do it?
In fact, on reflection, we should all be able to see that with all these cases the underlying argument, if followed, would have the very consequence it says it wants to avoid.
It says it wants a world that doesn’t discriminate in favour of the affluent. But the practical effect of such reasoning is actually to permit the rich to call the tune. If they decide to do something, and find a place elsewhere to do it, we would feel obliged to legalise it at home. In practice, our laws and ethics would be dictated by what the rich can do.
No one is saying that this is what they want to see happening in Malta. However, it would in fact be the practical consequence if we accepted the principle behind one of the arguments being made in favour of the proposed changes to the IVF law: namely, that not implementing these changes favours the affluent who can go abroad for one of the services. And that, we are told, is discriminatory.
On its own, however, it’s as discriminatory as Goodall not being permitted assisted suicide in Australia, a Tunisian man not being permitted to have several wives at once, and Europeans not being permitted to clone themselves when their billionaires can get it done in some island state.
Without a discussion of the ethical substance of each issue, the justice or injustice cannot be determined.
The discrimination argument is also being played in a different way. It’s said the current law discriminates within Malta, with money having nothing to do with it, because a heterosexual couple can access what single women and gay couples cannot.
Actually, the current law does not discriminate. Any legal challenge to it would fail. Because it’s quite clear that the law (rightly or wrongly) is consistent: it seeks to prevent anyone – married straight couples included – having third parties involved in any IVF services they seek.
So straight couples can have some IVF services – but just those where only they are involved; they cannot involve anyone else. All the other possible IVF clients need a third party, so they can’t have access to any service.
That’s not discriminatory. It treats everyone the same. The outcomes are different because of nature’s endowments, not society’s.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pass the new IVF law. It does mean we shouldn’t have bogus arguments for changing it.
It also means we should deliberate the issues, not race the changes through.
ranierfsadni@europe.com