The Value of Human Dignity: A Comprehensive Perspective

What is human life? It is the capacity of people to be born, to breathe, to develop, to procreate, to evolve and to die. It is the space of time that elapses from the conception of a human being until his death. But it can end earlier due to an illness or an accident. But we can also end it through abortion, suicide and euthanasia. Life is a right, living and dying with dignity is also a right, but dying is not a right.

What is human dignity? It is the special condition that every human being has by virtue of the fact of being human, and which characterizes him in a permanent and fundamental way from conception to death.

The concept of dignity is problematic, but so is the concept of person, as the philosopher Francesc Torralba states in his book What is human dignity? (2005).

Dignity is an invulnerable value inherent to each person; it cannot be lost, but it can be damaged. The more helpless and in need of help a person is, the more likely he is to feel that his dignity has been hurt.

But when it comes to human life and dignity, society sometimes does not behave as it should. Last month, a media outlet headlined a story as follows: “The government is preparing a law to protect great apes while disregarding human life.”

A society, such as ours, that refuses to condemn acts that our common sense tells us are destructive, such as abortion, suicide and euthanasia, is a society that has lost the ability to confront evil. It is a society that deprives people of life and dignity.

In 1994, Pope John Paul II said that our contemporary civilization threatened the life of the unborn, that this threat extended equally to the elderly and the sick, and that human institutions, democratically elected parliaments, usurped the right to determine who has the right to life.

The writer, philosopher and politician, Edmund Burke (1729-1797), father of British liberal conservatism, already said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Nobel Prize winner in Physics in 1921, referred to this issue when he said: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”. Will we continue to do nothing, sitting back and watching what happens?

As a palliative care physician, allow me to share some thoughts on the issue of euthanasia. We should not consider a dignified death as our only objective, because a dignified death is much more than a particular style of death, it is a broad concept, a philosophy of dying based on respect for the dignity of the person in order to preserve it until the end. The best end to a life is to die with dignity.

The help that those of us who accompany them in the process of dying can offer them is to preserve their dignity to guarantee them a peaceful, serene and painless death. But alleviating the suffering of the person should not consist of eliminating the person who is suffering.

It is true that when the patient cannot be offered relief from his suffering, some may wish to have their death brought forward so as not to continue living in suffering. Behind the request “I want to die”, there is an underlying meaning that means “I want to live or die in another way”.

In my opinion, euthanasia is not a sign of civilization. The way we treat people in vulnerable situations, the way we welcome and support the weak, the elderly and the sick, and the way we deal with the last moments of our lives, do show the degree of civilization of our society.

I believe that, in addition to a healthy society, we will be able to build a compassionate society when we are all capable of helping those in need while preserving their lives and dignity. This is a real challenge for all of us who make up this society.

We must achieve a healthy and compassionate society, because it is made up of people who are in contact with others and who need each other. Caring for their lives and dignity is the responsibility of the whole society.