The religious fanatic Dr Peter Saunders is in the news again. He’s sticking his Godwhacking nose into a place where it isn’t wanted. Our supreme court has ruled that legal permission will no longer be needed to withdraw treatment from patients in a permanent vegetative state. Saunders is furious.
Saunders is a prime mover and shaker in the extremist Christian Medical Fellowship whose purpose is to “unite and equip Christian doctors and nurses to live and speak for Jesus Christ”. Which is a particularly bizarre purpose. There was me thinking that the purpose of medics, regardless of religious superstition, was to treat people and make them better.
Now, I have no issue with Saunders and his ilk in choosing to be kept alive if, God forbid (which he can’t, because he doesn’t exist), he ended up in a vegetative state. It’s his business, not mine. If anyone wants to kept alive by being fed through a tube, being alive but not living, then good luck to them. It’s not the life I would choose and there’s the rub: I want to be able to choose and then have my wishes and instructions honoured. I have experienced the misery and, I have to say, horror of being with elderly relatives who have had to wear nappies and be hoisted from their beds in order to be cleaned following defecation. This is not how I would want to end my life.
As Christopher Hitchens pointed out, religion poisons everything. If you don’t want to have an abortion, then don’t have one. If you do not agree with gay sex, for want of a better term, then don’t have it. If you want to be kept alive when all hope is gone, when you are in a permanent vegetative state, then that should be your choice. But when it comes to me, mind your own fucking business. If you believe in a God who wants you to live and then die that way, you are welcome to him.
