When words lose their meaning, people will lose their lives

One of the areas of work of F. A. Hayek was the evolution and use of language. He noted that Confucius was reported to have said: “When words lose their meaning, people will lose their liberty.” And Hayek described the profound impact on culture and politics of the ability of intellectuals to use old words and give them new meanings. Sometimes, and misleadingly, those meanings were the opposite of their classical definitions. Unfortunately, we can see this phenomenon today when it comes to life issues.

At the time the 1967 Abortion Act was passed, an unborn baby would have been widely considered as exactly that – a baby: living, but not yet born. Indeed, however misconstrued, the Act was framed in recognition of that reality. It was thought by many that the situation of some pregnant women might be such that they should have legal access to abortion; and it was often assumed that, if they did not get legal access to abortion, they would obtain one illegally in any case. For this reason, the Act required that women seeking an abortion would have to obtain the signature of two doctors in order to have an exception to the normal criminal laws that apply when a baby is aborted, and the circumstances were laid down under which this exception could be sought. The Abortion Act 1967 recognised that, on some fundamental level, abortion meant the deliberate ending of human life.

Over time, however, there has been a complete change of language in our culture. That change has had repercussions, both in terms of how law has evolved and in terms of how abortion is used.

Instead of abortion being seen as some sort of necessary evil and a regrettable exception to how things should normally be, efforts have been made to normalise it as a neutral or even positive action – and those efforts have been successful. Abortion is regularly described as part of “healthcare”, including by government. Access to abortion is described as an aspect of “reproductive rights”.

Talking about mammals in general, National Geographic states: “Sexual reproduction occurs when the sperm from the male parent fertilises an egg from the female parent, producing an offspring that is genetically different from both parents.” Abortion has nothing to do with a right to reproduction as it takes places after reproduction – indeed, the whole point of abortion is to end a pregnancy by aborting the living offspring that is genetically different from both parents.

By distorting language, we distort culture and law. So, France has introduced a constitutional right to abortion and, in the UK, one in four pregnancies end in abortion. There is growing pressure for the decriminalisation of abortion up to birth in the UK, a far cry from the original legislation providing for abortion as the exception and not the norm.

The dangers of proponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia distorting our culture and law by redefining the meaning of words is at least as great. Already, the phrase “assisted dying” has become ubiquitous to describe what is, in reality, “assisted suicide”. For the BBC, “assisted dying” has become the normal way to describe assisted suicide and euthanasia despite the fact that they know it is controversial and hotly disputed. Even more serious than this is the promotion of the idea that people who are close to death are not just dying, but also not living! Of course, they may well be dying, but they are living too. This, for example, is Esther Rantzen’s daughter, Rebecca Wilcox: “This... is not about shortening people’s life, this is about their death.” The chair of Dignity in Dying, Rabbi Jonathon Romain argues: “It’s not about shortening life, it’s about shortening death.”

Let us be clear about this. If proponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia are saying that the taking of lethal medication does not shorten life, they are making a very strong and harrowing statement about people who are suffering and coming close to death: they are defining such people as not living in any meaningful sense. This logic has profound consequences. If people near to death are not really alive then why bother spending money on palliative care? Why ask permission before poisons are administered to bring somebody’s life to an end? If somebody feels a burden on others, and they are told that they are not really alive, why should they not elect for assisted suicide? It is hardly surprising that assisted suicide, once legalised, has become a slippery slope in every jurisdiction where it has been legalised. The change in language proceeds pari passu with a change in the law, and a change in culture and healthcare practice follows.

The dangers become even greater and the slope even more slippery as time goes on. There is a (more or less) a clear medical dividing line between life and death as we have defined it throughout history. If we move the line and define that part of our life during which we are suffering and close to death as “not life”, why not move the line a bit further, and then a bit further still to include people who are further and further from death or, indeed, to include people who are not in danger of death at all but suffering and struggling with life? That is, of course, precisely what has happened as assisted suicide and euthanasia has been expanded and “offered” to people who are mentally ill, people with dementia, people who are poor and even to children in places where it has been legalised.

Proponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia suggest that opponents who use the “slippery slope” argument are scaremongering. They are not. The slippery slope is an inevitable consequence of how the proponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia promote their understanding of the meaning of the words “life” and “dying”: it is an inevitable consequence of how they themselves define their terms. Returning to Confucius, we could say: “when words lose their meaning, people will lose their lives”.

Philip Booth is Professor of Finance, Public Policy and Ethics at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.