Should we care for humans more than animals?
Written by Dunja Kovachevich, January 2019
You all must’ve heard about Shameless, the over-the-top drama-slash-comedy show that Americans adapted from the British. It follows the misdemeanors of drunkard Frank Gallagher and his six kids as they fight to survive the crude reality of Southside Chicago. Yet, they keep making everyone laugh along the way.
Lately, the popular dramedy decided to engage more with moral and political issues. Incidentally, concerns about euthanasia were raised. The problem rose to attention when one of the siblings, Carl, set his mind on getting into West Point. But in order to enroll there, volunteering in community engagement was a must, so he set out on his quest to assist a retired vet with providing euthanasia for terminal dogs. Having his personal morals compromised, Carl decided to bring the dogs back home and nurse them until they died naturally—providing them with palliative care. The episode focused on the topic of close-to-death animal suffering and our empathy towards them, going as far as delivering a veteran’s testimony on how much easier it was to kill Vietnamese soldiers in battle than to kill their dogs.
In reality, there is a significant disparity in numbers when it comes to concern over animal rather than human suffering, at least regarding euthanasia. In the United States, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association, you can put your terminally ill pet out of its misery in all of the 50 states. However, if the same fate strikes one of your parents and they yearn for an exit, they better be living in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont or Washington because only there will they potentially be eligible for dying on their own terms.
To explain the rationale behind these disproportions, it is essential to sketch how people usually—but incorrectly—think about euthanasia. I will roughly divide them into two camps:
(a) those who see euthanasia as alleviating suffering, and
(b) those who see it as deliberately taking a life.
Perhaps someone could try to defend the disparity stated above and argue (b): “We are deliberately taking away someone’s life when it comes to euthanasia. That’s why that right shouldn’t extend to humans.” Taking away a human life, even if they give consent, one might say, contradicts many beliefs on the sanctity of life. It is much easier to bring about the death of an animal: “Animals we don’t empathize with as much as we do with people. They have a lower moral status, so it is justified to end their life.”
Something here looks rather fishy, apart from the obvious speciesism. Namely, if we think of euthanasia purely as taking a life, that doesn’t provide a reason not to kill our pets (and animals in general) whenever we want to—as opposed to the exclusive cases in which they’re terminally ill or suffering. Something is missing, and you can rest assured, even the proponents of (b) will inevitably be drawn to admit their notion is partial: “We euthanize our pets when they’re terminal and suffering.” Euthanasia should be regarded as taking a life (or helping one with it) with the purpose of reducing suffering.
Now, it is plausible to question why doesn’t everyone intuitively advocate for such a right among people. This leads our imaginary interlocutor into a dubious situation. They can either admit the legitimacy of euthanasia (in certain situations), or they must provide justification for the selectiveness of its applicability across species.
Someone might appeal to the 2017 study published in Society & Animals, which suggests that people empathize more with animals than adult humans when it comes to suffering. It is crucial to state that although this research lays out (some) facts on how we respond to suffering across different species, it doesn’t entail any guidelines on how we should act. Nonetheless, if an apology to such discrimination is to be established, appealing to religion or “the way things are naturally meant to be” should be eliminated from possible candidates for reasoning. A case against the extension of euthanasia rights ought to be based on more than just a “hunch” that it could lead to undesirable consequences.
The soundest arguments I’ve encountered against euthanasia opt for a different method of pain relief—palliative care. Still, this option is not victorious for everyone affected. A lot of patients diagnosed with conditions such as ALS, which indeed impose a severe amount of suffering, would have to continue existing, bound to their beds for the rest of their lives. For it to become a morally comparable alternative to euthanasia, palliative care proponents should come up with a solution for those cases. That is not to say that palliative care is of no value. It is still of high importance for those people who are determined to follow a natural path to death, while also having their pain alleviated. But as long as there are patients who wish to die with dignity, having the right to voluntary euthanasia seems like an inherent moral imperative.
