Olly Donnelly ¦ Contributing Writer
Last Wednesday, the College Historical Society’s weekly debate played host to “Right to Die” campaigner Tom Curran, speaking as a guest proposing the motion “This House Believes in a Right to Die”. Curran is the Irish coordinator of Exit International, an organisation campaigning to widen the rights of terminally ill patients to seek wider options in end-of-life care, including the freedom to self-administer lethal drugs in order to end life on one’s own terms. Curran is perhaps better known for being the partner of Marie Fleming. Fleming, a victim of Multiple Sclerosis, passed away last December, having campaigned to make assisted dying legal in Ireland, challenging the government in a case which made both national and international headlines.
Curran, visibly shaking, discussed his issues with referring to the discussed issue as having a “Right to Die”, noting the certainty of death in claiming that “We have an obligation to die. The question is of when and how.” Curran claimed that he felt patients, and indeed everyone, should have the right to die on their own terms, and in the absence if pain and suffering. He also referred back to the assertion, made before him by student speakers Ludivine Rebet and Clare Ní Cheallaigh, that it is unfair that it is now legal in Ireland to take one’s own life, but effectively illegal for those who are terminally ill, due to their frequent inability to commit suicide without assistance from medical staff or loved ones. Perhaps Curran’s most Salient point, however, was his reference to the ongoing case of Brittany Maynard, a 29 year old Cancer patient in California who announced her intent to take her own life next Saturday, though she has, since the debate, indicated a possible change of heart.
On the Opposition Bench, Senator Ronán Mullen made a case against the motion, arguing for the value of modern palliative care, and claiming that in the current era, “so much can be done to alleviate suffering”, to the benefit of those suffering from terminal illnesses, and identifying the problem of people feeling coerced into taking their own lives for the benefit of their families, claiming that we, as people, “Live under each other’s shelter and shadow”. The night’s most striking quote, however, belinged perhaps to a Student speaker, Clare Ní Cheallaigh, who claimed at the end of her own speech that ‘It’s important for people to be able to say “I’ve lived my life, and I’m ready to leave”‘. With only one dissenting “Nay”, coming from one of the opposition bench’s speakers, the motion passed near-unanimously.
