I’m too much of a Catholic convent girl to be persuaded by the arguments favouring euthanasia – now called ‘assisted dying’. But if I were to be tempted by the campaign advanced so successfully by Esther Rantzen, the point that might lure me is money.
Before you go on holiday, it seems sensible to revise your will, in case you snuff it on some foreign shore. I duly revised mine recently. It occurred to me that the longer we live, the more likely we are to use up the little pot of deposits that might have gone to our heirs and successors.
That’s unless we have been prudent and planned properly for the last years of life – a description that doesn’t fit those of us who have spent our youth in reckless abandon.
Andrew Carnegie, the magnate and benefactor, said that to die rich is to die disgraced – he thought good people should give everything to charity before they drop off the perch. I think the opposite: to die having emptied the bank account of the last spondulicks is surely mortifyingly embarrassing.
But if euthanasia gets going – as it has in Canada, Belgium and Oregon – the notion that dying saves money could be an incentive to have oneself bumped off.
The cost-of-living crisis can be solved by summarily dying. Were the option easily available, I bet some oldies, if they’re feeling a bit depressed about mounting bills, might take it.
Of course there are the spirited oldies who merrily advocate spending the kids’ inheritance, enjoying life to the end and letting posterity take care of itself.
Incidentally, there is an ‘assisted dying’ traditionally permitted by the Catholic church. The doc can pump you chock-full of morphine as you move towards the departure lounge, just as long as the intention is to alleviate suffering – even if the outcome is curtains.
