Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 5 December 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Assisted Dying
Protecting Vulnerable People: Discussion
Lynn Ruane (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source
It comes to the dimensions of healthcare. I was looking at the Martha Nussbaum stuff, and tried to read some of the chapters in The Fragility of Goodness, but I only noticed the quote too late and only got some sense of it. It led me to another journal that looked at some of her other work. Autonomy obviously operates in several different spaces. If we keep it within the ethical space of care, there is the idea that there are two ethical dimensions a medical professional will have to take into account. On one hand is the duty of care and on the other the importance of patient autonomy. There is that duty of care and the idea we cannot take a life. Autonomy then falls under the idea of the healer not being a killer or whatever quote was used.
I do not just read around the submissions that come in, I read all of the submissions. However, I still do not understand, from any contribution over the past months, how the collective good is damaged by giving that care, or that right, to someone at the end of their lives, obviously with stringent frameworks. Let us take into account a doctor's will not to cause harm and the fact you have all of these other principles interacting with this other principle. What if you remove the doctor from the role and the principles that govern them as a healer, as a doctor or somebody who does no harm and is there to alleviate pain but not take life? Remove all of those things, including a doctor. Is there the same negative impact on the public good, if you were to remove all of the ethical principles of a medical practitioner and look at it as a layperson?